Gate Light
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Alternative universe, genderswap. Seventeen-year-old boy with issues meets a sparkling female vampire with a zest for unlife as well as a very surly werewolf. Contains explosions, cyborgs, evil therapists, mad scientists, daring young reporters, and homicidal girls' soccer teams. Forget lion and lamb - this one's about a rampaging velociraptor and a rabid rabbit. Complete.
1. Far From The Madding Crowd

_"I'm torn between wanting to drink your blood or sleep with you."_

Sparkling female vampire with a zest for unlife meets seventeen-year-old boy with issues.

_"I'm torn between wanting to dissect you or date you."_

Explosions, cyborgs, evil therapists, mad scientists, daring young reporters, homicidal girls' soccer teams, and a very surly werewolf.

_"Touché."_

—

**Prologue**

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;  
Of polish'd ivory this, that of transparent horn:  
True visions thro' transparent horn arise;  
Thro' polished ivory pass deluding lies. - Virgil, the Aenid.

—

The girl with the pink-dyed braids and the ribbony, frilly, starchy nightdress that reached down past her ankles tried to dream.

You had to face your fears. You couldn't be a little girl all the time. Sometimes her visions went quick and sure and painless, sometimes nice as strawberry-apple pie with pink strawberry ice-cream for everyone concerned, sometimes she and her big sister giggled at all the new tricks they played with both their gifts.

She couldn't remember how all those nice desserts had used to taste, but she bet they were just lovely. A lot lovelier than rabbit blood. She always felt sorry for the little bunnies and everything else they had to eat. At least gold eyes were lots prettier than dull old black from forgetting to eat and being hungry, or nasty scarlet red, when... That wasn't nice to think about. The girl winked at herself in the dark, seeing everything as clear as if it was day. Her bare feet rested on the ground and felt all the tiny dents in the floor that looked smooth to any human eye.

She couldn't remember how it felt to sleep either, though she must have done. They probably used to make her do it a lot in that bad place her big brother—adopted, just like her big sister—had rescued her from. But the pink-white nightie was pretty. It made her feel like a little lady. She liked to remember and imagine what it was like.

Sometimes her sights told her brothers and sisters everything they needed to know, but more and more and lately and lately she'd seen black holes cropping up into the visions, like black holes spoiling flimsy cheesecloth fabric she'd ripped a little too far.

Sometimes when she tried to look too far she saw nothing, only darkness. And beyond the darkness she never saw anything else at all.

She looked ahead. Soon enough the blackness came. And then she searched and searched and searched for as long as she could, like trying to unravel a thread from a pretty costume and find where it frayed. But there was nothing to unfray. After the long night nothing would be left.

It was coming soon for her.

—

**Chapter 1: Far From The Madding Crowd**

The plane touched down to the tarmac, whistles and rattles everywhere. More discordant than the last time I remembered flying. There was a man squashed next to me, almost touching, thick arms like soft white bread. I could smell sweat. Like tea grounds, too closely packed together. I couldn't see anything beyond the small window. Grey fog, grey town; grey walls further away; away from her. I could say they put me, or I chose it myself. Dreams made her prey, and could have made me pray. But I can't see...

_Grey grief to sew; green herb of death and sleep._

Words danced green inside my head. Iambic pentameter, now and then. They always did; I remember the things I read. I clutched the hard-edged books that were my carry-ons. I hadn't noticed the stewardess having everyone get out.

Gordon was waiting for me. He wouldn't have trusted me to go to him alone. He shouldn't have trusted me alone to go to him. Two similar phrases, different meanings. I scratched at my sleeves and the wrists below.

_Once upon a time there was a terrible ogre who sought out the queen and her young son, to do violence and suck the marrow out of their bones. Or: once there was a woman who served the kingdom of science. She worked and she learned far too much of the truth, and so she had to flee. Because bad people would come after her to kill her for all she knew, and take her beloved son away from her. But nobody can kill the truth. Learn enough. Stay away from all our enemies._

_Your mother is ill. She's not responsible for her state of mental health. She's been telling you all these things about your father, and they're not true. He's going to have custody of you the way he should have years ago, and everything is going to be all right. And if it's not, you'll have the counselor at your new school to talk things through._

Gordon was bulky and brawny, the first time I'd seen him since the last time in the courtrooms, and I stepped away from his tentative one-armed hug.

"Well, son. I'm glad you're here. Let's pick up your bag."

He took me in his police cruiser, the lights off. The grass was green. I stared out the window, and didn't tell him how much I hated what he'd done to my mother.

"You remember Forks? You were four the last time you were here. I've still got that swing in the backyard. Maybe we can go fishing again with Sammy Black. You used to try eating the bait."

If it weren't for the pills, I thought, I'd look over at Gordon's hands on the wheel and see the monster Mom told me about. I used to think the way I saw things made me different, special, helping out Mom by telling her what was really happening; but there was only a glitch in my brain. Rain danced on the cruiser's roof like a thousand small rabbity claws.

Gordon made several more attempts at conversation on the ride to his house, then finally I thought he'd given up. I didn't say anything. He dragged my light bag of clothes out of the trunk and unlocked his door.

"We're here," he said. "Look, Xavier." He slammed a hand down on a wood countertop. "You're my son, and this is your home. In a year you'll be eighteen, and I hope you'll stay because God knows what else there'll be for you, but then the choice will be yours. Until then, you're under my roof and in my custody. It's been a long time. I know it was twelve years. I didn't forget about you. I hired private detectives, investigators, psychics—for a while they thought you were dead, but I kept on hoping. The one thing I wanted was to see you safe, not take you away from your mother. Now you're here, I'm your father, and I'm going to do what's best for you. The social worker's report said you're bright when you want to be, so I know the problem isn't that you don't understand me. Got it?"

There was only one thing to say. Sometimes people make it cold and clear what they want to hear. "Got it, Dad," I said.

"Kitchen's here." Gordon's voice changed to something lighter. "There's not much. I pick up takeout on my way home Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Washing machine here. Bathroom up the top. Your old room. I had it redecorated, since the last time you were here."

He took me past a line of old photographs to get to the stairs, switching on all the lights. I recognised my mother in a white dress, a wide smile as white as her gown and her long hair loose and waving. Wedding photo. Baby photos. Two children by a pebbled beach. I only knew myself by the color of my hair, the same honey brown as Mom's and sticking out in all directions. The other boy was even smaller than I was, dark-haired in a grubby overall and scowling tremendously even for a toddler. Gordon kept more mementos than Mom could. Memento mori. Remember a dead life.

"You remember that?" Gordon said. "Fishing on the La Push reservation. That's Sam's son Monty. It used to be hard to drag you two apart. Maybe the four of us could get together again..."

"I was four, Dad," I said. I didn't remember a thing. "I'm tired. I want to sleep before the new school."

"Sure. Fine." I avoided Gordon's touch again. "See you in the morning."

—

_A/N_: This story is loosely based on Twilight with occasional genderbending, characters exported from the game Baldur's Gate, but I hope it's understandable without knowledge of that canon. A male Bella with issues, a female Edward with a zest for unlife, a very surly werewolf, a universe spun half a degree aside, and an author who's trying not to take it in any way seriously.

For those who do know Baldur's Gate, which character is the human sociopath obsessed with the undead, and which character is the most important vampire? :D

_Disclaimer_: Twilight is not mine and neither are Baldur's Gate characters. Apologies may be necessary toward real people who live in Forks.

Thanks to pre-readers LttP, Writersblock164, and Scarabbug.

Green herb &c. quotes from Swinburne.


	2. All That Blooth

"You can't drive, can you?" Gordon opened the door to a battered dark red truck. I shook my head. "Well, you can learn. Coach Kagin does driving lessons after school. Nothing like learning on a thing with proper gears. They don't make them like this any more."

The engine's noise was loud, and shuddered at the base of my teeth. I'd taken the pills with a glass of water, two and then one, or at least I thought I had. I cleared my head.

"I could learn," I echoed. _Take a road trip into Seattle. Knock on Mom's door. And maybe never come back here again._

_Do they give out driver's licenses to crazy people?_

"Sounds good." Gordon looked across at me. "The student office has the red roof across the quad. You got the directions?"

"Yes."

"And the counselor's name's Melissa Enn. Your appointment's at twelve. Have you got your schedule?"

"Yes."

Mom never talked on and on about everything I ought to be doing. I didn't think I liked it, but then, I'd never had it even when the social workers got their hands on me. And besides, I'd made up my mind about this place.

"Okay. We're here." The school was a collection of square buildings painted in an interesting shade of puce. Dusty paths ran between them like the trails of veins concealed by sunburned skin. "You could walk while the weather's still warm. Before you have your license. We'll talk about the route on the way back."

I took up my bag, all the books I wanted to take familiarly heavy.

"You don't need all those," he repeated.

"Yes, I do."

"I'll pick you up at half past. Don't be late," Gordon said. "Take care."

The truck left the dirt carpark, trailed by smoke behind its wheels.

Another day, another new school. _If I don't send you to school, they'll notice and they'll take you away from me. _ I'd stopped going after I was tall enough to pass as out of it. I wandered down toward the secretary's building, checking again and again with the map and testing the ways of turning it. The first time you see a place you never see it in the same order you see ever afterward: everything's topsy-turvy and upside down or sideways, and it takes a while before it's in your head like a maze with the right things pointing upwards.

Something bumped into me, and almost made me fall.

"Heya! I'm Imogen here, daring girl student reporter for the Forks High School Times! You must be the new guy, Chief Swan's son! I'm the welcoming committee—kind of—and I was wondering if I could get an interview with you—'cause, y'know, everything—and it's a slow news town anyway—"

She was a short red-haired girl, and she was holding onto my arm like a leech. There was a chess piece around her neck on a length of silver wire, a white knight.

"Don't touch me."

_You can't hit people and want to hurt them; because that way you _ do _hurt them, now you're tall, and that's bad_.

I wrenched myself free.

"Aww, c'mon!" the knight-girl carried on. "It's all over town and it'd be over heaps of newspapers if'n only you weren't a minor! Your mom kidnapped you from Chief Swan for twelve years, you can't say that's not news! Any hot gossip for the papers? —Or, heck, I'm sorry, I guess it must've been rough on you, I could just show you to your classes and stuff—" She stretched out a hand again.

"Leave me alone," I said again. "You look—rotten. Rotting. Go jump off a bridge—stumble into a speeding truck and smashed glass ground over your broken bones—like your empty skull lying hollow on the road—" This time she whirled away, letting go quickly, crumpled and silent before she turned away.

"Man, he's totally creepy beyond all icky creeps ever," I overheard from her, and that was okay. When I stared like that and spoke of things like that I made people turn away, and it seemed the pills hadn't made it stop yet. I might have to get used to living without so many things, as long as the medicines worked.

Other people stared, and there were still only a few people scattered far away from each other that it should have been easy for me to deal with. I don't like large crowds, and I know the lists of the things I don't like. I passed by a training field; a tall girl wearing shorts and an unusually ferocious expression was yelling at a soccer team.

"What're we going to do at the county match on Tuesday, girls?"

"Crush them?"

"Louder!"

"Crush them!"

"And?"

"Crush them and maim them and hear the lamentations of their cheerleaders, for that is the point of life!"

"That's it! Forks High Girls' Soccer Team, go forth and strike fear into the hearts of our rivals!"

Over on the other side of the quadrangle, there was a boys' football team doing what seemed to be exactly the same thing. A tall black boy yelled them through exercises.

"Cordoba, I don't care if you think you're busting a knee, let me see hustle! Willow, quit staring at the trees and show me some pushups! Beauregard, front and centre! Get ready to show Allyer what we got! Saioji, move it!

"You know how many matches the girls' team won this year? _Four_. Are we gonna be beaten by Dosan's bunch of girls? Hell, no! We're going to take Allyer, and we're going to crush them! Hear me?"

"Crush them!"

The sound was remarkably like the same on the other side.

"'Scuse me," broke in one of the boys, looking at me. "I've got to go, Anders. Show Xavier Swan around the school." He smiled at me; I didn't return it. "You're Xavier, right? It's easy to tell a new face around here. I'm Cordoba. My folks only moved in three years ago."

The other boys on the team were watching.

_—Don't let them pay attention to you, Xavier, stay in the background, if they watch you too long he'll come and take you away from me—_

But the reason for Mom saying that didn't exist any more.

"_Valerie_ Cordoba," another boy clarified. There was a snicker among them. The guide stepped over, brushing grass and dark brown dirt off his sweatshirt. He had a squarish face below dark cornrows, a flat nose and even-set brown eyes.

"Call me Val." He jerked a thumb over to the building I already knew was the secretary's. "Have you been to Bartman's yet?" His voice was quiet and slow, and thankfully calm as his face.

Rachel Bartman handed me a folder overflowing with papers, class lists and schedules and a map of the school with the routes to and from in pink and green highlighter.

"Everybody says Chief Swan's the best police chief this town's had," she said. "Welcome to the school, Xavier. I hope you'll like it here." She stared as if I was about to grow a creature's claws. "Valerie's our Vice President of the student council. He'll guide you on your way." Her eyes shone as if she was a martyr earning a crown.

_It's easy enough to say nothing_.

"Don't talk much, do you?" Val said. "I'm like that too, when I'm not showing people around. Cafeteria, biology labs, plant nursery, English and History."

"So I understand," I said.

"And here's the lockers. You've probably got a key there." He stood over me, waiting; I produced it easily and went for the number.

"—For goodness' sake, Erin! You've got to stand up for yourself! Grow a spine already! Now you listen to me, Erin, you don't take no for an answer—" A red-haired girl, shorter than the first one to find me but with a much louder voice, waved a finger up at a fair-haired girl only slightly taller than she was. I thought I'd probably seen the first girl before, out on the soccer field in the back; she wore the uniform. "You face up to the bullies, and what do you say? You say, leave me alone."

"Maggie, it's f-fine...really..." The other girl brushed a lock of her long hair from a pimpled face, stuttering.

"No, that won't do, Erin! Are you a mouse or a woman? Stand up to people and take it into your own hands! Learn how to say no and mean it!"

"N-no..."

"Not like that!"

"No?"

"Just follow my advice and stand up to yourself! Say it, just like I told you to do!"

"Maggie, it's Val behind you...and the new boy. See you in Natural Science class." The fair girl darted off like a silverfish, smiling quickly at the two of us as she passed.

The red-haired girl with the face like a trained bulldog stared up at us. "Maggie Fenton. Student Council President." She stuck out a hand formally as if she wanted me to shake it. "Val's my Vice, and a good one. Shown everywhere?" She wrested the highlighted map out of my hands. "Looks like it—all the buildings, all the classes in order—double English—appointment—Independent Living—" She whirled through it all like a short hurricane. "Erin Aird's in your Biology class—Ms Harper's—she's a bit shy. Erin, not Ms Harper. Skipped two grades. The Council _tries_ to keep a registry of students interested in tutoring—when they remember to update—if you need—"

"I won't."

"It's halfway through the term. You'll need to catch up at least—" Maggie said, eyeing me suspiciously.

I liked arriving late through; the teachers let you sit in the back and read to catch up, and leave you alone for quite a long time.

"So, Val, make sure Xavier knows he can find help with the Council—"

"Going now, Maggie. Got to get to class."

"You don't need to walk me there," I pointed out to Valerie.

"All right," he said in that easy voice. "They'll get used to you. And you'll get used to Maggie bursting blood vessels every now and then."

"What about Imogen?" I asked. "The chess necklace." I wasn't sure why I bothered.

"Im's great. Not one person in the school doesn't like her," Val said. "Did she meet you?"

"Yes."

I'd found the classroom; past time to go in and read. There were lots of people who didn't like me, and if it made Val leave me alone, that was a bonus. I just didn't like the idea of the boys' football team defending the daring girl reporter's honour and deciding nothing would be more fun than punching the creep. They can go after you even while you're trying to hide from them.

English poetry on photocopied sheets, structure of the novel, a Jane Austen to read. Mom showed me Mansfield Park; I liked how Fanny liked to read alone, but I hated how soppy she was. Sense and sensibility. Sensibility, older meaning: the power of sensation, empathy, feelings.

I walked across to Ms Enn's office, though again people kept staring. I had a yellow pill; I could take that if I wanted to feel dead. And new books to read, if the photocopies counted.

Melissa Enn was a tall woman with flame-red hair, who favoured a heavy necklace decorated with feathers and a paisley shirt and skirt that echoed the same design. Long red nails held a scarlet notebook; rough light brown hands waved through the air.

"Go ahead. Sit down, Mister Swan." I moved a box of disarranged papers off her chair. "Custody battle, wasn't it? Chief Swan sent over all the papers. Mind if I have a smoke?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Your mom kidnapped you for—what was it? Eleven years?" Her eyes glinted a deep blue like the light through tinted glass.

"I wanted to be with my mother."

"That's not how the courts put it, is it now, Mister Swan?"

"Applying the Bonfield best interests test the court appoints custody to Gordon Swan, in accordance with the earlier decision. Conditions of neglect and mental abuse satisfied. Catalina Swan is unfit."

"Someone's got a memory on them," Ms Enn said. "And your medical report?"

"DSM-IV. Section two-ninety-five point seven-zero, see also two-ninety-seven point one. Also, I'm very antisocial. Prescribed, three yellows and two blacks, morning and night." I'd read what they were saying about me and the holes in my brain. Thinned-out spots where the mesolimbic pathway narrows; if human sight could magnify it might look like a silver-red tree eaten away into rags.

_You're still young; it's not gone too far. It's a moderate prescription. You have every chance to lead a normal life._

_Why would anyone _ want_ to lead a normal life?_

"So that's what's prescribed," Ms Enn said, "but what are you taking?"

"Only two and one. Otherwise I stop dreaming and everything turns grey." Her voice was grey itself, but she probably couldn't help that.

"Take your proper medications. Those should make you less defiant, for one thing."

_Don't be ridiculous, I can't live without dreaming._ But I told her what she wanted to hear. Dusty filing cabinet; too many papers, many smoke-yellowed; halfway-full ashtray; picture frame lodged halfway behind the cabinet and nail hanging loose on the wall above.

"Good boy," Ms Enn said, adding treacle to the grey, tapping her nails on notebook and smoking cigarette. "Tell me about your life with your mother."

"We were happy."

_I didn't love her enough, because how else could I have failed to take care of her?_

"Then she went off to a room with nice white padded walls."

"Grey, actually."

_Twenty-seven Auburn, room one-eighty-two. Hospice forty-five minutes out of Seattle. I'd be physically closer if I'd insisted on staying in foster care. But the die was cast._

"Picked up by welfare. How did that make you feel, Mister Swan?"

A name is a name is a name has infinite meanings; but most times I hadn't been Swan. Mom changed surnames, and then I'd done it too after she started to leave. Sometimes I hadn't even been Xavier.

"Unhappy." She left blood-red lipstick on the white end of her smoke.

"Describe your relationship with your father."

I supposed I was talking to a stone wall of a sort. She was tapping her nails again, watching the filing cabinet behind me.

"Unfamiliar?"

"You know, the stats show that people like you have fifteen years less to live," she said. "Ten percent suicide rate. About the same chance of making it to college. I'll go for the counselor's question again—how does that make you feel?"

"My mother has a doctorate," I said. She'd read it to me, explaining everything in it: thin blue book unprofessionally bound and typed instead of printed, title page ripped apart. She married when she graduated.

"Your mother's compos mentis is distinctly non. And what do you want to have?" The red nails drummed a bored pattern, like bleeding flies buzzing around in circles. The ceiling was fly-spotted. I could see black shadow gathered on Ms Enn's face that wasn't—strictly speaking—there from the light, as if five-eighths of the woman was something hopelessly concealed below a shapeless void; but that sight would not turn out to be real.

"How should I know?" I wrenched my mind away from her shadow. Whirlpools, lines of Christina Rossetti on the photocopies; I joined flyspots together on the walls in prisms. Who'd like telling a complete stranger everything? _A bruised reed shall he not break_.

"You think you're some kind of tough nut, Mister Swan," Ms Enn said. She blew out grey smoke that made me cough, wiping a sleeve across my face. "The county pays me to sit here regardless of what you say or don't."

I couldn't see an answer to that that she'd want to hear.

"I know for a fact you've landed in my Independent Living class. Walk down with me and have a seat with the other retards."

—

_Bathroom Etiquette_.

Ms Enn read from papers in a grey, slow monotone. Sometimes she explained it over again to the two in the front row, a boy and a girl who didn't speak well. I sat in the back, next to the girl in the wheelchair.

_This is...somewhat insulting._

_Click, click, click._ There was keyboard and screen on the girl's lap; she moved a small, stiff hand back and forth.

The simplest structure of any story is a plain chain of causative events following in chronological and logical order, I read. But this is not the only way of the story for life is a whirl and welter of jumbled tangled events and as the lives of the characters become interwoven it is expected that the reader will eventually receive events in the same achronological order as in reality and unmask along with those one has come to feel for and understand...

_Click, stop. Loud click. Tap, tap. Stop._

I looked up.

MS ENN TEACHES LIKE A WILD BABOON IN A CHINA SHOP, DOESN'T SHE? said the screen, tilted across and down.

I decided to scribble back on one of the margins. _Yes._

YOU KNOW HOW SHE INTRODUCED THIS CLASS? WELCOME TO INDEPENDENT LIVING, NOT THAT ANY OF YOU EVER WILL, BUT GOD HELP ME I'M PAID BY THE COUNTY TO LET YOU KNOW ABOUT THE BASIC LIFE SKILLS YOUR PARENTS COULDN'T TEACH YOU.

SO WHAT ARE YOU IN HERE FOR? She jerked her hand to herself.

_Congenital lunacy_.

I'M THE ONLY CYBORG IN FORKS. She jabbed at her keyboard. The right side of her face was dragged down with muscle spasms, like melting wax. PENTIUM-3 CPU. LIQUID CRYSTAL IPS DISPLAY. INSTANT SILICON POWER TRANSFER. MEGA BATTERIES UNDER THE SEAT.

_I read a novel like that once._

ACTUALLY IT'S CEREBRAL PALSY. MY DAD BUILT THIS RIG, BUT I PROGRAM IT. JANSEN MECHANICALS. I'M JENESSA. WHO'RE YOU ANYWAY?

_X_.Unknown quantities.

OH, I GOT IT NOW, CHIEF SWAN'S KID.

_I'd rather not be_. She typed faster than I could scribble back; the words came up on her screen after only a couple of letters.

IT'S THAT KIND OF TOWN. EVERYONE'S UP IN EVERYONE'S BUSINESS. GET MY DAD TO TELL YOU STORIES SOMETIME. OR DON'T IF YOU LIKE HAVING EARS.

_I didn't say I'd be here long_.

IT'S A GOOD TOWN. JANSENS FOUNDED IT. PARTLY, ANYWAY. GREAT-GRANDAD ELIAS AND GREAT-AUNT PHOEBE AND GRANDAD HERBERT.

_I have no grudge against the town._

GOOD, I'D HATE TO HAVE TO RUN YOU OVER. JOKE! OR SEND AN EMAIL TO MY BIODAD'S PEEPS TO SHOOT YOU. ANOTHER JOKE!

_Why, is your biological father a marshmallow fan?_

HE'S A LOADED ITALIAN-AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN. WORTH A MILLION. CRAP ON THE ALIMONY, THOUGH. OR MAYBE I'M JUST TELLING ANOTHER JANSEN STORY. YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, N00B.

_I believe what people say. It saves time._

NEXT CLASS WE'RE LEARNING HOW TO FOLD TOILET ROLLS INTO NAPKIN RINGS.

_Ha._

An engine in the wheelchair jolted into life the moment before the bell rang.

SEE YOU THEN, SUCKER.

—

A book, a juice carton, and a sunlit corner with a relatively clean plastic top in the cafeteria.

A gorilla's hand picked up the front of my shirt and slammed me against the wall behind.

The face was big and bald and shaved. Teeth were in a mouth in a scowl. He lifted me off the ground, head level with his burning stare. One of the man-mountains on the football team. He only touched my clothes.

"Boys—should—not—be—mean—to—girls." He'd spoken slowly. "You were mean to little Imogen. Bullies are not allowed in Forks High School." My collar tightened around my neck.

"_Misha!_ Misha, stop it!" Imogen came running. She pushed her way under his shoulders, followed by fair-haired Erin. "I didn't say—put him down!"

He waited a little while; and lowered me.

"How many years did they hold you back?" I said. I didn't feel like holding back myself. "Keep your brain in your triceps? Three-year-old brain in a chimpanzee body? Too slow to do anything but what other people tell you? There's always someone who's happy to hit people and act like it's a whole thesis. I'll say anything you like—I do that instead of fight or sports—but it's meaningless, and you're stupid, and you'll die and rot after a pointless life of never thinking anything—serves you right, troglodyte—"

He slowly let me go.

"You...you s-shouldn't be a bully back, Misha," Erin said, stuttering over the braces in her mouth. "He's right about that. _You're_ right about that." She gave me a quick nod.

"You are not a nice boy. But I will be nice back." The hand let go—and brushed me down.

"No, Misha, he was mean to you and still a major creep," Imogen said, reaching up to pat him on a muscled shoulder.

_And flickering not far below her skull, she burns like golden fire—_

"But y' can't beat people up for coming over creepy, or you're just as bad."

"I don't think he s-seems all _that_ bad," Erin said. "Just...frightened."

_A whirlwind inside her, quiet now but waiting; and the third of them well-water deep and still—_

"I am that bad! I'm worse!" I protested. "I bite!"

"Weird as the _Cullens_ ," Imogen said, jerking back a thumb to a lunch table on the far end of the cafeteria. "C'mon, Misha, sidekick. Just leave him alone like he wants."

"I wish...I wish you wouldn't call me that, Imogen," Erin said quietly, turning her head.

I didn't care in the least who the Cullens were: a group of four sat by themselves with uneaten lunch, two male and two female. A hollow of silent space was clear around them as if they had the effortless power to keep people away. A slender African-American girl sat without saying a word, but she'd lift a finger in some slight gesture and the boy with her would rush to fetch her water, juice, a tissue, lipstick. The other boy wore a short beard, silent like the right-hand pair of them, but the white girl close by his side seemed to talk unendingly, though she spoke directly into his ear and nowhere else. She hopped off her seat for a moment, two bright pink pigtails over her head, very short; a little person, as they're called, a dwarf. None of them bit into apples or opened cartons; and the pink-haired girl wound her way nimbly as a needle past the crowd to throw away whole apple and unopened orange juice.

Val sat on the other side with a group of his friends, the football team's captain and another boy. But this time his calm look was cold, and when our glances met he turned to stone; unforgiving. I looked down at the lunch tray—and at words on paper.

A tumult came from the doors outside, cutting halfway through a word. They were flung open with a noise as if they'd break and shatter at any instant; a group marched in, led by a short dark-haired girl, swaying on high thin heels.

"_Who_ is the basketball champion of Forks High _and_ the entire world?" she yelled in a shrill high voice, pumping a pale fist in the air:

"—Bodhi Cullen!" the others cheered her, milling around like iron filings drawn to a compass. "Bodhi Cullen!"

"Yeah, bitches! That's right! Hello, Sandro—go away today, Val, you're boring me. Who's here now?"

"Hello, Bodhi. You must have played a good game."

"Fuck, yeah! Three baskets and a rebound in a minute! I dodged under Tammy's arms and up into a three-point turn—and then—"

She progressed through all the tables, as if she would overturn them all because it amused her; I tried to ignore it.

_It's too loud here. There aren't _ that_ many people—really, there aren't—you've seen worse crowds—but too loud, my head hurts, rats eating roots of white rotting trees—_

Black print wavered on the page. I thought I heard wolves howling, old buildings creaking, people screaming and the air red and suffocating. "Dirty," I said high, in one of the voices in my head that aren't mine, "a scrubbing brush, roach in the drain—"

"New meat."

Bodhi Cullen had come too close. She swept aside my table as if she could have lifted something much heavier without breaking a sweat, and leaned over me with her hands on her hips.

"They call me Bodhi. It's short for Bodhisattva. Like the goddess."

"You don't look Indian," slipped out of me.

"I'm not." Bodhi waved her right hand; she curled and uncurled black-painted nails in front of her eyes. "I used to love it there, though. Sun and rain and thick sweltering air like moist syrup. So hot. So rich. So much hunting. Why don't you tell me your name, new meat?"

"Xavier."

"Like the saint," Bodhi said. "Oh, I know about you, Xavier. Scion of the great chief Swan. Creep or at least general weirdo, mostly. Very, very mean to poor little Imogen. Almost made her cry.

"Not that I fucking care." Bodhi Cullen leaned on the wall behind me, bending down, still too close. "Little Immy needed taking down a peg or two. You know how annoying she can get when she pesters you too long? About as annoying as several fleabites around your ass just turned septic and leaking. But I don't really mind her." She twirled on her stiletto heels, moving too quickly. "She's more entertaining than most of the lame-ass retards in this fucking hick loser school."

A boy nearby turned his head. "Did you just call us—"

She stalked over to him with the same speed. "Oh, I didn't mean it, Hari! Say you forgive me, all right?" She flashed a white-toothed smile at him, dangling over him and staying with him; and he returned the smile. "You know I like it when you rock out. Ditch physics with me? Bring the strings."

But instead Bodhi Cullen turned back to me, not teetering at all on her high heels. She wore black jeans with large holes cut out of them; cleavage above a small, tight shirt in the same lack of color. All black and white as an archived newspaper, except for yellow eyes.

_She moves like a flash of black oil._

She smiled briefly. Her face was undeniably beautiful: a rounded forehead leading down to high cheekbones and a small pointed chin, a Roman nose, the lightly smudged lipstick as black as eyebrows and eyelashes, all smooth grey skin and elegant bones. Except for the way she was leaning far too close.

"Like what you see, new meat?" she said. "Or are you some kind of fucking faggot? Your line here is, _I swear my sword to you my liege lady_ , maybe. Or just kneel down and beg me for a date. People who believe too much in Malory bored me years and years ago. Or can't you talk? —No, it can't be that, you said enough to little Immy—"

"If you don't back off," I said, "then I may start screaming at you. Or saying the same things I said to little Imogen. I don't know you—you move like there are worms crawling below your skin—"

"I don't want to know you either," Bodhi Cullen said, and slammed down a pale fist into the table's plastic. It cracked and shuddered; a piece flew up, and I felt something sharp hit me just above the eye. Bodhi spun on a heel. "You can fucking well leave me alone, freak!"

_She hates me_ , was the wild thought, the eyes like molten gold for all I'd done little to hurt her, _hates like poison_ —

"Bodhi, stop it at once." It was the African-American girl with the muscular boy who had stood; called across to her all the way from the other side. "Come and pretend to be civilised, dear."

"Oh, shut your fucking mouth, Ronnie, can't you see I was fucking leaving already? You're not the boss of me, so go stick your head up your ass—oops, wait, that's Antony's job, isn't it? I'm not your brainwashed boytoy, I'm your fucking aunt here, Auntie fucking Bodhi—"

I sat in the empty biology room to wait for class. There had been a cut by my eyebrow, scabbed over already; an old table and a strong girl, I supposed.

"I'm Ms Harper. Here's your textbook. We're in the middle of mitosis." She wore brown hair loosening from a ponytail like a lion's mane; she wasn't a tall woman, but she filled a room with her voice. "Have you studied it before?"

"I remember it. I've...read about it." _The cell moving, as if it boils and bubbles with the need to multiply itself; chromosomes lining up for the dance, then stretching and growing and coming apart. It's a beautiful thing..._

"We'll be separating onion slides into the phases of mitosis they represent. Follow through with your textbook, but don't let anyone else look over your shoulder." She glanced over her class list, scowling suddenly. "Sit there." More students had started to file in, Val and the fair-haired Erin, a second boy from the football team. "The microscope's in the cupboard under the table."

Bodhi Cullen came last into the room, holding her head high below her cloud of black hair. The only empty seat left was next to me.

"Erin," Ms Harper said, flashing Bodhi a glare, "switch desks. Do the lab with Xavier. Bodhi, you're with Valerie."

"You've—you've done a good job of setting up the microscope," Erin said from behind her hair. "Would you...would you like to do the first sample? I can't look at your book."

"Interphase. Prometaphase." _Spindling chromosomes parting: the kinetochores pull the sister chromatids along the cell lines..._

"Did you both have a turn?" Ms Harper stepped around to us, looking down at my scribbled notes and diagrams.

"He d-didn't even look at the book," Erin said, pointing to the two she'd completed.

"So you have studied it before," Ms Harper said to me. "Well done. Make sure you finish the homework. Come early next class and bring it to me."

She marched over to Val and his partner, who sat back and tilted her laboratory stool with a foot raised in the air. Val bent over the microscope, writing slowly but steadily with a black pen.

"Bodhi? Need I ask how many you've done?" Ms Harper said, folding her arms forbiddingly.

"Prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, interphase," Bodhi Cullen reeled off, counting on her fingers, still swaying on her chair as if she'd fall at any moment. "You've seen one wrinkly old onion skin, you've seen them all. Kind of like the wrinkly old onion on your shoulders. By which I mean, Mizz Harper, your head is a wrinkly old onion." She drew out the z: _Mizzzzzz_.

Ms Harper's glare rained green down on her. "Another zero; another detention, Miss Cullen. You'll find I have a lot more patience than you."

Bodhi giggled. "I wouldn't think so, Mizz Harper. I really wouldn't think so. But that's okay. I can just ditch and get my big bro to smooth things over with the headmaster. Where's that shiny new lab coming from again?"

"And no patience at all for those who think they can buy their way out of school discipline. Put that chair down and sit at the far desk. I don't want to hear another word out of you."

Bodhi sniffed, tossed her head, and obeyed; and as she did she looked at me with the same hatred I'd seen in the cafeteria. Fury blazed in her. I had to look away, to Val's small calm smile below the microscope as he was left alone.

"She...she sometimes says cruel things," Erin whispered to me, writing her work. "But when she is close, she...dazzles; she m-must be nice, somewhere inside her... Her older brother is the surgeon and he helps a lot of people," she went on. "Jon Cullen. His wife is Ellie Cullen; she owns the local nursery, and she helped our school set up our garden. She speaks at the school on nature days. And they took in four foster children, even though Doctor and Mrs Cullen are quite young. Veronica, Antony, Killigan, and Alora. And...and you know Val already, and..." Erin's voice dissolved into a terrified squeak as Ms Harper walked back around to our table, though the teacher said nothing; and neither more did the girl.

Not one more class was with Bodhi Cullen; trigonometry and history, then the end of the day.

_Gordon will be waiting._

The bookbag swung heavily from my shoulders. I hadn't done that mathematics before, but the book was there; then Roman history, _a terrifying time when the empire seemed to be collapsing and the world was constantly changing...and now I'll read you some old Roman proverbs, by the anonymous writer known as Cato. This is what he wrote while perhaps to him the world was falling apart. Instruct your mind with precepts, nor cease to learn; for a life without principle is like an image of death._ Imogen folded together a paper aeroplane and quietly threw it across the room while the teacher spoke.

Four boys with motorcycles waited outside, fidgeting with engines and lounging against bike stands, passing cigarettes to each other.

"Hey! New kid." The one who spoke was the shortest of the four of them; but he was muscular and tough-looking, scowling permanently. "Welcome to prison."

"We're the barn dance committee," another boy said.

"We're the ones you don't mess with," said a third. "That's what we're about, right, Monty?"

_Monty._

_Fishing trips and old friends—sort of—_

"Montgomery Black!" I said. "Gordon reminded..."

The shortest one raised a knotted fist, muscles clenched. "'Cause you're new," he said, taking a step toward me, wandering, "and 'cause my dad respects your dad, you get one chance. Traditional-like. It's Monty. Monty Black. One more screwup and you get shanked. Got it?"

Then the motorbikes roared into life, and they were gone.

Gordon's cruiser sat on the far end of the carpark.

"How was school?" he asked. "Anything much happen?"

"Nothing much," I said.

—

_A/N_: Two sparklepire rule amendments in the persons of Veronica and Killigan: first because Meyer's skin bleaching is incredibly racist, and second because it's not like the vamps lose their head hair is it now and because the Baldur's Gate character definitely has a beard.


	3. Open Book

"I see you're about as good a cook as I am," I heard. I lowered the fork and the small tin of cold baked beans I'd found in the yellow cupboards. I'd heard the cruiser returning from another shift. "No, it's okay," Gordon said. "I brought takeout." The smell of kimchi and noodles filled the air. "How's your homework?" he asked.

_Mom asked too, before things were very bad._

"I've done most of it," I said; my mother would have told me more about Ms Harper's questions, about the work she'd done before she changed. She needed me to know it. "I'd like to go out for a walk."

"Not until you've— Well. If you're nearly done, then," Gordon said. "Come back before it gets dark. Have you taken the pills?"

"Yes." One; one-half. I had a headache; but I didn't wish to obey Ms Enn. Perhaps it had made me scribble down nonsense mixed with the words I knew.

"Get to know the area, that's good. Son," he added, still awkwardly. "I have to be in at work early tomorrow—but if you're up then I can drop you off. Do you remember the way I told you?"

It's easier to remember words on pages than spoken words, for me, but I recited it with a few hints.

"And sign yourself up for driving lessons," Gordon said, spearing kimchi between the takeout's plastic chopsticks. "When do you have gym?"

It was one of the hardest classes to hide from. "Tomorrow." I cleaned the last of the bean sauce, then took it to wash. The leftover food could be in the fridge for a night.

_He doesn't act like a monster. I know he's not a monster_. Shadows danced nimbly as the girl on stiletto heels on the underside of the cupboards.

"Have some of this," Gordon said, mouth full. "Cousin of one of my officers runs the restaurant. Twenty-four-seven opening hours.

"I do eggs and bacon myself," he added. "Fried fish. And a mean rissole with a pasta bake. Cat used to make omelets and paella..."

It took me a moment to realise who. She didn't like her new friends calling her Cat.

"I know," I said quickly. _Onions, crinkled ham, potato and bell peppers, sliced up and fried thickly with oil and butter in the pan—_ But mostly it was cans, ramen, simple and cheap, or what Mom called foraging. "Mom...taught me. A little."

"You'll learn more in your class. Useful stuff," Gordon said. "I wish I'd the time to learn. She's near to a saint, that woman."

_Like the saint?_

"Which woman?"

"Melissa Enn, of course. Don't tell me you didn't go to her—" Gordon frowned. I told him I had.

"The Independent Living class was her idea," he said. "Teaches all sorts for the skills they'll need to take care of themselves. The sacrifices she makes for the kids in her care... How did you find the class, Xavier?"

I thought back. I hadn't hated it.

"Fine." I stood.

"Don't stay out too long," Gordon cautioned. I picked up the small bag.

"I won't."

—

Cool air, scudding clouds, green grass, growing rain. There were heavy fields of trees by the town; I wandered along the side road, growing damp and feeling cleaner. There was nobody I could see; it was all calm and quiet. Along the dirt road I saw a trail down to grey gravestones below a hill, at the very outskirts of town. Wind blew through pine needles, rustling in the rain. I walked between them, almost losing sight of the roads, and sat on a rock below the quickly greying sky. Still-light rain spattered on the sheet of lined paper.

It would have felt wrong to do this under my father's roof.

_Mom._

(Like she'll be conscious enough to read it anyway. She didn't know who I was or talk at all when she woke up.)

_The plane didn't crash. I didn't run away._

(I'd've done anything to get away from staying with that crowd in the home. I'm pretty sure you'd say I did.)

_Get better, if that's possible. I could be with you again in less than a year. If I had a way of looking after both of us._

The rain smudged the paper, even with the thin ballpoint. I moved it under a wider branch.

_It's raining here. You can tell from the paper. I remember you telling a story about a grim grey place that rained all the time. But I see a lot of green._

_There are at least some people who hate me here, but I know what I'm like. A girl who doesn't move like people usually move, as if she's something only shaped like a person, a white stiff oil slick cut out like a Roman statue. And a girl I scared away from me, a chess piece around her neck. And her friends, the quiet boy who showed me around. I don't like the click of the counselor's nails. I don't want to be in a crowd of people, but it's less easy for me to hide here. They've been warned about me._

_I don't hate it here. That's always been enough._

_Gordon is trying._

_Some things you know beyond a doubt are real. Like the changes in a growing onion cell, or like turning triangles upside down and across, where there can only be one answer because of the constant threads that hold the world together. But I can read stories, too, where things are as complicated as we've always known they were. There's no ogres or monsters here, but there's enough to be confused and dizzied when there are too many people._

_My head hurts. I could take more pills, but I refuse to lose myself to either that or the dreaming world that's taken you._

_Until next letter._

The sun went invisibly behind the grey horizon, and I set off back to Gordon's house.

—


	4. Tyger, Tyger

I walked past, and Bodhi Cullen leaned over the secretary Rachel Bartman's desk. She twirled on her high heels and waved her hands in the air, snapping forward and back to loom over the seated woman. She spoke loudly enough that it was impossible to miss what she said, lecturing and yelling.

"I just want a fucking transfer! Is that so hard?"

"Watch your language, Bodhi."

"Get me out of that cow Ms Harper's fourth-period Bio and into something else! Just transfer me!"

"I'm sorry, but there's nothing else that fits with the rest of your schedule."

Then Bodhi looked back and saw me, glaring with angry dark yellow eyes.

"Have a look," Rachel Bartman went on, swivelling her monitor toward her. "Nothing I can do. Sorry."

"Oh, forget it, you cunt. Oops!" Bodhi giggled. "Really got to watch my language, right? Don't worry about it! It was just a whim of mine. There's nothing I'm not tough enough to handle in that class." She was watching me again, that same crazed anger smoking from her; I turned away, leaving.

_She hates me. I still don't know—_

_Are you some kind of fucking faggot?_

_And there's no reason why I should care._

"Hey, bitches!" Bodhi Cullen called as if she wanted some distracting entertainment, and other people flocked around her like seagulls to stray crumbs.

Maggie Fenton had first-period trigonometry with me, and after class she pounced.

"I know it's only your second day," she said crisply. "First I should make doubly sure you know where everything is."

"It's a small school."

"Secondly... Do you want me to be honest about the elephant in the room or not? Everyone's heard it that you've been ill in your head and about your mom—"

Suddenly I rather admired her straightforwardness. "Yes. Go ahead."

"I try not to listen to gossip," Maggie said stiffly. "Things tend to blow over in due time. You shouldn't worry too much about it. But I think you should be told that Bodhi Cullen is a juvenile delinquent, and that it would be better for you to stay away from Imogen Winthrop. And from Bodhi, too, although that doesn't seem to be a problem."

"Neither of them are," I said.

Her bulldog's face broke into a satisfied smile. "Good! So glad we had this talk, Xavier. Remember, the Forks Student Council is here to create a positive environment for everyone." She hastened off, overloaded bag jogging on her small back.

_Gym_.

The coach thrust a boys' uniform at me and ordered me to change. There were four simultaneous games of volleyball, two girls' and two boys'; and a practice boxing match marked off between ropes for the bulky captain of the football team and Imogen's acquaintance Misha. I dawdled as long as I could in the locker rooms; then went to face it.

"Get in the back." Coach Kagin pointed to an empty space and blew a whistle for the game to resume.

There's nothing more pointless than trying to flick a plastic ball backward and forward over a net. Unless it's trying to chase a pigskin ball across a field, or hit a heavy plastic ball with a stick.

First too fast for me to judge the position. Second to the other side, thankfully, aimed by Val on the other side of the nets. He stood next to a tall boy with braided dark hair and an Asian boy I remembered from trig. A third; passed by the other members of the team to each other and back across the net.

The fourth hit the side of my head. For a moment I could see—or imagine—red sparks, red stars driving through my skull; it had been hard thrown. Someone laughed. They picked up the ball and started again.

I caught one; then it hit my shoulder. I thought I remembered faces by Bodhi Cullen, boys following her wake through heavy doors flying open, coming at her call. Balls flew and hurt as if they were medicine-balls rather than plastic and air, one by one over and over. The angles were in the air, but I couldn't decipher them in time. There was laughter again; it might not be an accident. Chin. Solar plexus. Ears ringing in the side of my head. Val Cordoba never threw any near.

The coach's whistle blew in a blur of sound and powerless fury.

"Slow learner at this, aren't you?" I thought I heard him saying. "You're meant to hit the ball back—" More echoing laughter. Voices faded in and out inside my head. I wanted to run far and fast as a beetle's whirring wings away—

A herd was leaving, over. I must have changed with the rest of them; must have flowed to sit in the back.

_I can't do this. Too many people. Shapes bruising me on purpose. Grind your bones and spit them out. Scribble, mess, I'd run but they'd find me too soon. Stay in the back and pretend, forget the headaches and the grinning faces multiplying and laughing and billowing shadows that probably aren't real, I know what's wrong with my head and I didn't want to kill the sights—_

_I can't do this._

Ms Enn had to be next after disastrous geography. In the back she said nothing to me. Only five people.

_Click, click, click._

_Tap, tap._

_Stop._

And then I could gather myself long enough to read the words on the screen.

HEY, WHO MESSED UP YOUR FACE?

The bruise must be visible. I scribbled back and managed to form words instead of meaningless hieroglyphics this time; words calmed.

_Gym. I hate sports._

AWW, SORRY. TOO BAD, spilled across the screen Jenessa owned.

_It might sound crazy and it might _be_ crazy and nobody else noticed it but I thought some of them hit hard because they like Bodhi Cullen and she glares at me and I know what I'm like but I don't know what I did to her but she hates me, I know it even though I'm not good with people but the way she looked. Never mind! She'll leave me alone! That's the only thing I wan_—

The pen's nib broke off; ink spilled in a thick blot over the paper and my hands. I struggled to clean it up and save what could be saved, the words on pages needed and reading over them in new piles gave me something to fill my mind, words and layouts and diagrams of artesian wells in Florida (we didn't wander there to see wells...). I pushed the nib back in place over the ink; that always made it blotch ever after.

_The largest artesian spring formation in the world is located in Silver Springs in the natural..._

The computer screen flashed back at me.

OH. OKAY. JEEZ. THOUGHT YOU WERE BRIGHTER THAN RAFE AND JULIA, LEASTWAYS. The other two in the class.

_What's the matter?_ I scribbled with the blotchy pen.

LOOK, WE JANSENS MAKE UP OUR OWN STORIES RATHER THAN LISTEN TO THE RUMOR MILL, BUT YOU CAN REALLY COME ACROSS AS A WEIRDO, SWAN.

_If it's second best to coming across unnoticed: fine._

A SULKY WEIRDO.

She barely knew me. _Also fine?_

WELL, IT'S NOT AS IF I DON'T KNOW BODHI CULLEN, she wrote.

I stared at the words of her name.

_She's very pretty. But comes too close._

PRETTY IS AS PRETTY DOES. SHE PLAYED A PRANK ON ME ONCE, Jenessa's screen spelled out, the words bare black pixels on bleak white. GRABBED MY CHAIR AND RAN. I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER HOW SHE DID IT, AT FIRST I THOUGHT SHE WAS JUST TEARING AWAY WITH ME TO SHOW HOW FAST SHE COULD PUSH. NEXT THING I KNEW WAS I WAS TRAPPED UP ON THE EDGE OF THE GYM ROOF. COULDN'T WHEEL BACK.

That meant in sight of anyone who walked past, pinned like a dead butterfly in a book's illustration under glass. Or falling like an iron-wheeled star.

BUT IT WASN'T LIKE SHE LEFT ME ALONE THERE, the story went on. IT WAS FIRE DRILL AND THE WHOLE SCHOOL WAS STANDING UNDER THE GYM AND WONDERING HOW THE HELL SHE DID IT AND HOW TO GET ME DOWN. ONLY TOOK TWO HOURS.

_I understand. I'd have hated that._ The picture had unrolled in my mind, black-stained and dreadful.

SHE SAID SHE WAS SORRY. OR SORRY SHE GOT CAUGHT. OR SORRY AND WASN'T IT A LAUGH. HA HA. BUT SHE GOT HER DETENTIONS. AND HER BROTHER TRIED TO CUT MY DAD A CHECK. AS IF. TORE IT UP.

SO SHE'S A JERK. FORGET HER, Jenessa Jansen typed.

_Good point._

"There's a quiz." A sheet of paper with a few fragments of red nail polish dust on the white landed in front of me. Ms Enn tapped back to her desk on high heels—not so high as Bodhi Cullen's—and opened a magazine to read for herself.

_The three H's are: hygiene, hand-washing, and: _ ._

_After using a urinal, always _ ?_

I started to draw a kidney over it, smudging spilled ink over artery and vein leading to it, labelling parts. I was curious; my mother showed me how it worked. A sheep's kidney, fried up afterward, _this part...I don't remember, but we can find out, can't we? Waste removal._

"Not in a cooperative mood?" Ms Enn said darkly, but she didn't bother with anything else, and I filched a new pen from her desk.

More history, the schedule said. Then biology, in a classroom instead of the laboratory; glarings-at by both Ms Harper and Miss Bodhi Cullen. It was easier to do this, finish writing up the lab and copy down diagrams beginning meiosis; I could be calm. Ms Harper kept her classroom quiet, except for Bodhi's occasional bold insult and whispered talk to two boys who sat by her.

I kept away from the cafeteria; sat in the last classes of the day, reading; and walked back to Gordon's house alone. Truck there; cruiser absent; spare key at the bottom of my book bag. The pain behind my eyes had grown, black spiderweb pressing in and spiraling away to other worlds. I walked up the stairs to the small bed in the room. _The child's room_, I could think of it, old toys in a corner, a desk and chair and reading light, yellow walls sloping up to slanted roof. Lists calm your mind. _She was the queen of Italy. Curled carven hair and cheeks worn wan. She sought fierce false lips. He was like a clear sea with moss rocks below. Meiosis begins when the chromosomes decondense..._

I lay down and fell asleep, and dreamed.

—

I dream in colors I can't see in the waking world or find existing words to name. Shireen, audularescent, minaver, grisan. Possibilities tumble over each other like waters in a high storm, everything crashing all over itself. I walked through a jangling carnival with no fear of the noises. Tall climbing ferris wheels, spinning through a night with stars that pulsed like painted ones. Flyers and posters dizzying with wild words and pictures, elephants, bears, dwarves and monsters. Pink webbing spread across the grounds, spun sugar but not sticky trap. Ribbons and pennants flew through a dark night. Fireworks spread like multicolored comets.

One step forward, and mechanical birds cried songs with paint flaking off their throats. Lights flashed in strobe patterns in strange colors that hurt not at all. Small cars zoomed and whined around a track, and the smell of hot butter and oil spread everywhere. A crystal ball spun with a thousand reflections in its misted depths.

I stepped forward to a velvet tent and into cool darkness wound around other shades of black in soft thick ropes. Something without shape or form moved in the shadows. Smoke-weighted incense filled the air: fortunes told, and cards and the innards of a crystal ball danced inside my head. Queen of Spades, sharp as swords. Jack of Hearts, cup filled with a green rose in water. Knight of Clubs, or was it Jack of Wands? I searched for diamonds and a lady below them, a queen asleep far away. The bier slipped through my fingers, and the sight of anything to break the darkness was only an illusion. But it was a quiet, soft darkness; and I searched for the hundred thousand colors absorbed by it, set below its surface like stars captured in black water.

_Not afraid of the dark any more..._

—

It was night. The door was closed. I sat up and groped at the thick blanket over me. It was warm; I hadn't done it.

_Someone was in here while I slept._

Blind unreasoning panic shook me. I threw the thing aside on the floor and ran to the window.

_Unreasoning, exactly it—calm—can stop a door even without a lock, chair, table jammed—_

The glass was easily flung open. Cool air—dark—

_Chair under the knob and safe, can seal yourself in any room. Any room made safe._

The driveway was dark. Yellow streetlights reflected off two vehicles. The trees loomed black near the house. There was logic—not fears and not what I saw moving in the dark and felt beating at the door— Pain split my skull in two. I reached where I knew the pills were.

_In the morning—and after dark—_ I swallowed two dry, not too many, Ms Enn was wrong, sitting on the bed with shoes touching the floor rather than that dark blanket. There was something moving downstairs—light through the crack in the door. I'd jam a chair below the knob without a lock or bolt; I could do that if I wanted. The house kept moving below. _Far below. Very far below._ No creaks on the stairs.

It calmed after some time in the dark. I ran a hand over my forehead and felt sweat.

_Clean. It's very important to be clean. Even only a sink with brown water and a rag..._

The bathroom was across and could be locked from the inside. I stumbled to the shower and let the water run. I put on the same clothes, afterwards, the door still locked, and borrowed the razor to shave in the mirror's foggy reflection. Two to three weeks between needing to do that. There was a quick-fading bruise on the left side of my face; it didn't hurt.

"Xavier!" the low voice yelled up. _Gordon_. "Come down."

He sat at the wooden table in the kitchen, kimchi in front of him. "We might agree to have dinner together," he said. "Sometimes I'm home later, but I'll warn you. Important to get to know each other again."

I sat down and accepted the plate he pushed toward me. He used disposable chopsticks; he'd given a fork. I ate, drifting away into the spaces beyond him, but he called me back again and again.

"I noticed you were home. Long day at school?"

"No."

"Gym today, right? Did you ask Kagin about the driving times?"

"Probably not." Too many faces and voices that they blurred. _Not the worst. By far not the worst._

"Just bring back the forms. It's not that hard."

"Yes."

"Good for you to be independent."

I said nothing. I was independent enough to look after my mother, at least for a while.

"And you'll need your hair cut. It's getting a bit long, don't you think?"

"I know where the bathroom scissors are."

"Did they give you much homework tonight?"

"No."

"You were...talkative, before," I heard Gordon say, his plate pushed back in a plastic rustle. "You never were quiet from the moment you figured how to talk. Wandered around exploring everything and wading into anything we forgot to hide away. Reading picture books out loud and reciting them to everyone. Wanting to be picked up and shown everything the grownups could see. Always asking questions. Cat said you got that from her side of the family. What did she do to make you into _this_? You're not even looking at me."

There was more silence for several moments. "Never mind. Perhaps it's too much too soon. Give me your plate," Gordon said.

"If I said too much, that might well be worse." _I can talk when I feel like it._ I had to scrape the plate clean first; wasting food was very bad.

"I'm not going to pressure you into it. What do you want to do, Xavier?"

I stood. A streetlight would be enough. "I'd like to walk out again for a while."

"No." Gordon's voice was sharp and loud, turning the word a biting indigo. "Not after dark. That's final."

_Then I won't be able to write to her today—_

Like she'd be able to read it.

Agreeing to one thing for them, even if inevitable, can mean they're more willing to give you something else. I know at least a little about how to use that. "When can I visit her?"

"Saturday week," Gordon said easily. "Ferry, then a three-hour drive. As long as I don't get called to any murder cases," he said.

"Visiting hours twelve to two," I gabbled. "Paul Lange waiting room—second steps to the right—" I stopped myself speaking.

"They're doing the best they can for her. You do know that, right?" Gordon said.

_No, of course I don't_, I thought_. I have no way of knowing that. Maybe they're hurting her; she's asleep most of the time and there's nobody behind her eyes to talk back to them. But I don't have the power to take her away from there._ That sent me down into a black valley.

"Thank you," I said. "I want to see her. I should...do the homework."

—

A/N: Reference made to lines by Swinburne.


	5. Islands of the Mad

There are brighter tops of cold high glorious mountains without doses; and there are also low dark caves and cages, depths and being frozen and where it's hard for me to remember the most recent things said to me, more headaches and deathly cold that feels they'll last forever. But then they don't and I fly.

_It's mild. The point is to _pass_ as one of them. I can live on less medication and keep stronger dreams at my choice. What does she know?_

Sometimes pages can flow like a waterwheel foaming high, streams of ink and a heady knowledge of the parts balanced on both sides and all the proof to know it's right as the universe exists, add simple mathematics even in a void; sometimes nothing and I sit still and lost inside. You can't find yourself unless you're lost first.

Biology was like that. Ms Harper's questions were the sort that had you search instead of scribble from memory, dig up two pieces of knowledge and find something new from them joined together; you thought and there it was. Books and words and facts don't care what you are. She handed me a syllabus of everything done that year and the parts in the textbook that fit together, and I felt I wanted to.

_Sickle cell trait is a mutation that began in Africa when a crossover mismatched on a single point and instead of two good hemoglobin beta genes there is only one; which can cause damage if you are in high altitude and lack oxygen but helps you against malaria; and despite the mutant change it is passed on._ _Edward Ferrars admired tall straight trees instead of crooked; hothouse flowers rather than nettles and thistles; tedious silence instead of telling the truth; and he must have been deathly boring with no imagination and I'd have hated him._Sometimes I felt as if I told the same story from opposite directions.

HELLO.

_Hello yourself_, I wrote back, and spent Ms Enn's class swapping notes at the far desks. I remembered to bring the forms from Kagin, and stayed away from people and in empty classrooms when I could. I walked for a long time in daylight on the weekend, and wrote to my mother under a green hill that I'd see her soon.

_She was wrong and I stay myself._I closed my eyes and let the colors flow around my memory of pictures magnified below a microscope.

It lasted until I was alone with Ms Enn again.

"You haven't been taking your meds like a good boy, have you?" she said, and the red nails tapped over the desk.

I can lie. "Yes! Yes, I have. I've done everything. People watch whether I go to class and I do—you can't say I haven't—"

"No. I know the way the grotty minds of the likes of you work. You did the opposite to my suggestion. Probably went under the minimum the doctor said. Tell me I'm right," Ms Enn said.

I hadn't bothered to take anything that morning. Her red hair crackled and seethed. The nail taps hid a painful furnace and the sickening smell of burning things.

_It's—not all the monsters I can see are real—_I folded my arms. "No, I won't tell you, I won't..."

"I should bring it to medical attention. Recommend your doctor to raise the doses, perhaps. Tell me," she said, and her voice was much slower than the painful gallop of her nails. "What would you think of that, Xavier Swan?"

A furnace the shape of an iron cage, the bars searing hot in a prison. "No," I said.

_I can think because my world's not grey—but maybe—I can think—_

"I was wrong to undercut the dose. And I was wrong to try to lie about it," I said, almost proud of the second sentence. "I found...a dose that balances a sensible medium. I ought to stick to that instead of experimenting. I will from now on."

"You remember what I told you. You're not a stupid boy," Ms Enn said. "Be good and tell me. What did I say?"

"Three and two." It slipped out; I should have tried to lie. She'd spoken too fast, a grey voice. "I...it's _okay_to incomplete, numb, avoid—" The words were trapped in my throat and I jumped ahead.

"No, it's not. You've every look of a troublemaker, and I made up my mind to avoid that the moment I saw you," Ms Enn said. "Lithium, eskazine—a calming combination."

_I'd tested her. I made a test and she failed with those words._I watched her.

"Could I get that in writing?" I said. "Sometimes I hear things—you know it's typical—"

"My student showed distinct intransigence and mental disturbance and I made a certain recommendation to his medical adviser," Ms Enn said. "Is that what you want?"

I'd stood and paced; papers were falling under my hands, clutter of Ms Enn's. I couldn't remember doing it. She looked very pointedly at the mess on the floor. "No," I said, knotting my hands together to keep them still. "You've changed my mind."

"Very good. Pick those things up." I controlled myself, moving slowly because I had to. She relaxed, lighting a cigarette. "You're thinking you'll try to fake it. Don't. You're far more transparent than you think. It doesn't matter if I'm guessing; only if I'm making the right guesses. And I am, aren't I? Go back on the meds and be nice and tractable to the sane citizens."

"It goes grey. Everything goes grey. If I take enough. I can't do that," I said. "I can't _live_like that."

Too calm and I'm empty. Dreams go away. I'd never lose myself that way again.

Ms Enn lowered her smoke, leaning forward like a banded red snake. "Do you know what I'm required to do if you're threatening to kill yourself or harm someone else? Involuntary psychiatric confinement in the county hospital. I wouldn't even need your father's permission; but I'm sure he'd give it to help you.

"Do you know what would happen there? You've probably already been somewhere like it, but this is how it'd be here. They'd lock you in a small ward and make sure you'd enough tranquillisers in you to avoid any _sudden_actions. Or any actions at all, really. They'd use someone watching you twenty-four seven. Padded walls, plastic mattress, nothing you might use to hurt yourself. No bedsheets, no clothing, if you might hang yourself with it. You'd be naked on a plastic sheet below an observation window or two. So I have to ask, is suicide really what you're threatening?" She smoked lazily, lolling her head back.

_Well. I know what I don't want._

"I probably wouldn't, I'd somewhere else— She only has me. She doesn't have anyone else. As long as she'll wake up and need me—I wouldn't do it." It was the truth. I looked down at my hands, curling and uncoiling like worms.

"'She' being your mother? Very Oedipal," Ms Enn said, grey smoke curling from her mouth.

_There is one thing I have left. I have only a year. Less than a year. Less than a year and I can go— I can look into the future and make forward plans, it's one of the things I have that means I can think as well as anyone, means I can pass as if I'm not crazy—_I thought.

"Don't say that. Don't you—" _dare_, I was about to, but knowing her I stopped myself.

_Do you remember your mother ever touching you in any way you didn't want?_

_No. I understand—comprehend, apprehend, fathom—what you're saying very well. Don't bother simplifying it into childish language. She never did. You're the vicious ones for implying it!_

"Like I'd take out my own eyes," I babbled. "The story's more about fate—you can't avoid what was written in the stars even if you try hard—the son you abandon will be saved and grow up to destroy you—and a man walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night."

"What an interesting digression," Ms Enn said, smoothly grey. "There's no point to try to distract me. Watched cell at the county psychiatric—or back on the right doses?" She looked at me, and made me look back. In her eyes were red-black stiff scales.

"I've never tried to hurt you."

"Proper progress comes from anticipating problems." I didn't answer back. She stubbed out her cigarette in a half-filled ashtray. "Less backtalk already. Come along to class."

—

_She would be inflexible_, I thought, watching her sit bored, watching her read from photocopies sitting on the desk. _She wants...quiet. She wants obedience. She knows but doesn't care about the writing in the back because it's still quiet... _I lowered my head into my arms, because I was tired, and tried to rest.

The school library was fairly quiet during lunch hours; away from people and tumult. It was small, much smaller than most public libraries, most of the textbooks printed in the sixties and some far older books scattered through them like odd intriguing grains. The largest section was the five-eighties, decimal system: new books on plant life, glossily printed with pictures, many of them focused on the local flora and some very large and costly. A smaller one bore Bodhi's surname. _Plants of the Olympic Peninsula: A Field Guide_, Helen Cullen. Privately printed, plain-covered, and with colored illustrations ordered in the back. I'd left it alone.

Myths and fantasies, for comfort; books like my mother's textbooks; lines of rhythm that sung like words should, but sometimes fell flat; and I liked to know what nobody else did. Hidden in the back shelves was the safest place.

_Any words. I have to still understand words, I have to stay myself. I'm starting to hate this._

I found a dusty dark brown volume in the religion section that had been untouched for some time; birth omens and superstitions in ancient times. _If Ms Enn was born with two heads and scales on her neck the king would be slain by his brother in a war..._

I was late to Ms Harper's class and received a glare. Bodhi Cullen's dark head wasn't visible. I sat a chair apart from fair-haired Erin, comfortably alone; still feigning normalcy.

_She thought I was _frightened_. Stupid girl._Erin sat next to Val on her right, watching the teacher's every word.

_I feel almost clear. Neither high nor low. Waiting for the house to fall._

"See me after class," Ms Harper said, returning homework marked in red pen. Erin looked at me, filing out.

"I know it's the junior lunch hour before my class, so there's no excuse for failing to read a clock," Ms Harper said, folding her arms. "Don't be late to my class."

I could see why only Bodhi dared to say things to her; she was stronger outward than Ms Enn, like an uncompromising thick tree. I'd forgotten to try to give a reply when she spoke again.

"Do you enjoy biology?"

"I've read some books."

Ms Harper gestured impatiently. "You've not done badly, though some of your tangent ideas are completely disproven and this work is very disorganised." She pointed to a section crossed out in heavy red ink. "The third-century crisis of the Roman Empire isn't exactly relevant to punnet squares."

"History class," I said.

"Yes, I know. You'll find Mr Al Hira roughly agrees with my assessment," Ms Harper said. "You don't read your work before you hand it in, do you? Look at Erin's." Small neat blue writing in perfect small rows, possibly with little hearts dotting the i's. "She takes her time. It's a useful lesson to learn, especially with all the foolish distractions such as cell phones and social networking on a screen." She whisked Erin's work away again.

"Stay working with her as your lab partner," Ms Harper continued. "Next practical's chromosomes—then comes the annual blood drive." She reached on her desk for a form. "Most have already done this; this needs to come back from your father. That's all. Don't be late for your next class."

"Yes, ma'am."

The fair girl wasn't far from the door still. "Ms Harper..." she began to me, walking to mathematics. "She's...she's w-wonderful, isn't she?"

_I don't care. I really don't care._

"She knows so much about her subject...and she's such an amazing teacher," Erin said. "And her hair...it's so pretty in the sunlight shining past her, isn't it? Like dark liquid gold...and her voice... And I'll do my best to be a good lab partner, it's my favourite class," Erin finished quickly.

"It's inconsequential," I said coldly. "As are you."

Erin seemed to fight against sudden tears at the insult. "I was right," she said softly, "and if I could help you, then it would be right to try." She took herself ahead.

_Some of this isn't real._

"Freak," said a boy I'd seen by Bodhi Cullen's side, and stuck out a leg to trip me; I fell, gathered up my books, but nobody was there any more. The walls closed in like the bars of a prison. Someone spoke in the background without a face—no, that probably wasn't real. Words on a page were always the same, you could always go back to them and pick up the dropped threads, and they always echoed in the memory.

In the days before I went from screaming at—everything—to nodding and doing everything I was told and losing myself. It's a small death—Tess passing by the stone of a hanged thief, dreading her own hanging because Alec Stoke hurt her too much and then she murdered him— A library-book, a yellow paperback that stayed with me.

_When at a right-hand intersection and an amber light..._

It was after classes. Coach Kagin was another one who really didn't care; wanted nothing from anyone. And he left me alone to read the manual while he gave practical lessons to others. It was tedious. My thoughts spun elsewhere; I tasted copper and fire in my mouth as if I'd bitten myself.

_Lose myself to dreams or to the sort of grey walls that come inside my head. Or naked below a panopticon with too many eyes gazing in, magnified—a fire drill and a rooftop trap._

_—_

A/N: Chapter title is from Sylvia Plath. "And her hair is so pretty" - Baldur's Gate ref.


	6. Frail Things

"You know that I probably wouldn't threaten to commit suicide?"

Gordon dropped a plate. "_What_?"

I scooped up another forkful of spaghetti. "Just a conversation. Things went wrong, I guess."

_I'm calm. I can do this._

"No—I'm trying to help you," Gordon said, heavy-voiced. "Goddammit, Xavier— There are people who can help you—phone calls I can make—" He looked suddenly pale. "I've been _trying_—" he repeated. Odd changes swept repeatedly over his face like fireworks.

"Which part of 'probably not' isn't making sense?" I said. "I'm not the kind." Books try to discourse on the different types of people and their capabilities, but I don't find it simple to match with reality. "There's always somewhere else I can go even if it's not real—"

That didn't unclench Gordon's fists. "They said I wasn't a risk that way, didn't they?" I asked rhetorically; I'd read exactly what they said. "They were _right_ about that." I laughed, probably too long before I cut it off. Probably a sign that I should have stabilised myself.

"Look. Just tell me what the hell kind of help you need—I'm not going to lose you—" Gordon said. "Think about this if nothing else—I'd lose you—"

I could barely get a word in. "I'm saying no," I tried to repeat. He was big and angry; careless of dishes and wasted food; but he never touched me. Eventually it came across.

This can happen when I try to talk to people.

"Would you—like to—start from the beginning," Gordon said carefully, sitting down once more.

"Ms Enn brought it up," I said, not quite truthfully. "I thought you'd want to know the facts."

"Which are that you have no intention of harming yourself," Gordon said, breathing heavily. I agreed. "Because if you do—_tell me_, or her—because these things can pass—I've seen my fair share of junkies and drunks, and let me tell you they get over it once they've sobered up— We can help you," he repeated. "Roll up your sleeves."

He looked at my arms. "All right," he said. "It's not that I don't believe you."

_No, it is._

"Melissa wants to help," Gordon said. "So she was pre-emptive. If you said it the way you did to me I don't blame her. Or you. I'm not angry at you," he lied. "She's a...good woman. She went with me to the station Christmas party last year. I met her at one of the school fundraisers.

"Now about gun safety..." He repeated the lecture that had echoed back to me the first time he'd spoken it in his house. Assume always loaded; never touch it anyway; never point it at anyone; never actually touch it, and I always leave it unloaded at home anyway. That means you. "You know not to touch guns."

"That's all, then. I'm going up to the room," I said.

_Does that check the red queen? I never learned chess. Balance it out._ The cool night air hit my face from the open window.

—

"Looks like I'm back for another lab, Mizz Harper." Bodhi swaggered back in the class. Striking contact lenses covered her eyes, a light purple dotted by silver stars that matched patterns she'd painted over her nails. She draped herself in an impossible position next to Val, leaning all over the swaying stool.

"Can you see in those...things?" Ms Harper asked the obvious question.

"Ask my big bro if I can't! He's a doctor, after all. So did you miss me, Mizz Harper?" She drew out miss and Mizz alike. The teacher thrust down catch-up work in front of her. "Val? Craterface Erin and the freak?" Erin shuddered; I caught Bodhi's unreasoned glare once more. "Sorry, Craterface, the acne's just getting worse and worse, and the company you're keeping's ever so creepy—"

"That's a detention," Ms Harper said, unleashing her own fierce glare. "Go to the library and do the work you missed, Bodhi, and I'll speak with you again at lunch, little as I want to—"

"But he really creeps me out, Mizz Harper!" Bodhi said, looking up to her; and some in the class nodded to watch her. "Isn't it like the rules of feminism to stick together? Or maybe he bothers me less now. Gosh, I only wish someone would help me with my stalker—"

"Go to the library, Bodhi."

"Thanks, Mizz Harper, I remember sometimes why I picked your class in the beginning. Never boring," Bodhi said, giving a bright and almost innocent smile; and flounced out of the classroom.

_I don't remember seeing her for days._ And she stood out in crowds. _She likes telling stories. She doesn't matter._

The karyotype slides were easy enough to identify and compare and contrast. Erin was quiet, quiet as usual; she did the work and raised her hand to softly answer Ms Harper's questions.

"Did you..._have_ you f-followed Bodhi?" she asked me in the halls. "Or...d-did something that makes her t-think..."

"Not that I remember." I smiled slowly. "Then again, I don't always remember exactly what I've been doing, or what the voices in my head tell me to do..."

Erin promptly turned tail and left me alone to read.

HOW'S IT GOING? the words on the computer screen spelt out.

_I'm trying to be very compliant and agree with everything people say._

_Well, sometimes to scare them away_, I wrote.

SURE. EVERYONE RUN FROM THE CRAZY SCRAWNY LUNATIC BUILT LIKE A STRINGBEAN. AT LEAST I'M THE ONE WHO CAN MOW PEOPLE DOWN.

_That is also fine! But not literally._

RIGHT. JUST GIVE THEM A GOOD SCARE, HUH?

_Good. Some of them are capable of learning though it takes them time._

I ought to make efforts on Ms Enn's food-preparation-hygiene worksheet. Proper, slow efforts that didn't go in any uncommon directions.

MY DAMN BIODAD'S TURNING UP FOR A HOSPITAL FUNDRAISER ON THE WEEKEND. HE'S AN INVESTOR, Jenessa's screen said.

_And you want him to leave you alone?_

SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO DECIDE THAT. MAYBE HE WON'T BOTHER. DAD HATES HIM. MOM WAVERS ABOUT THINGS. HE WANTED A NORMAL KID.

SCREW NORMAL. JANSENS WRITE OUR OWN STORIES, the screen finished.

_What do you want to write?_

GOOD QUESTION, CRAZY N00BER. WHAT DO YOU?

—

I'd learned the way to walk to the still graveyard between the green hills. They're quiet places; few people are there and those who are keep themselves to themselves; all peace and stillness. Vines and leaves grew thickly around the gravestones, some colored red and yellow for fall. Stone angels and rising tablets watched me below the tree and passed no judgement.

_Dear Mom._

_I've been writing to you more regularly lately._

(Will you read it? I'm going to see you.)

_Gordon's taking me up to Seattle. Even you might say I should be grateful. I hoped to be able to see you. Can you wake up before then?_

(Probably not. That's all right. You don't have to make yourself.)

_I'm only good at being alone, except for you. I like it. I've been writing to Jenessa, though. I still remember everything you told me, and I know you were trying to protect me. It hurts more if you let people in. Like injecting a broken bloodied needle under skin. We're doing the blood test lab next. I remember what you are. I should be the same._

(Should Gordon's half show in me?)

_Maybe things will smooth out. I don't know what the counselor will say next time, but I don't want to get too far ahead. I'm seeing you before I'll be alone with her. That's the part that matters. I won't let her say anything else against you._

(It's only a year.)

_You carried books and read them to me, and I understand things. I put the pieces together and I think I like that. The school has a small library. I'd show you, but you hate this place. We can go wherever you want if I can take you._

_I'm seeing you, Mom. It's not the end of everything._

_I'll keep writing these._

—

"And the gear you start on should be..."

The photocopied words spooled themselves in front of my eyes. "If a manual transmission the parking brake should be on, the car must not be in gear, and in some makes and models the clutch ought to be depressed." I'd read it, dry and drearily written though it was—or at least the first part.

Coach Kagin fixed me with a long narrowing stare and rummaged around on the dashboard, looking into all sorts of corners of the car. He was old for a teacher, I supposed; he looked barrel-chested from a distance and had a loud voice, but close to his wrinkles and liver spots made him seem as ancient of days.

"Show me your hands. Wrote it down there or something? Up your sleeve? I know all the tricks you little maggots pull to get behind the wheel..."

"There's nothing here." Eventually he came to agree.

"I'm keeping my eye on you here, Swan, and you still don't get behind the wheel until ten hours of classroom instruction and a nice certificate from your doctor," he said. "You think you're a quick learner? Tell me how you do all that crap you reeled off."

"...Which one's the parking brake?"

He leaned his hands and head heavily over the steering wheel before pointing. "Ha! Knew you couldn't have learned that fast. That one. You forget it, and—" He made the gesture he'd explained meant scattering your blood and brains and guts everywhere across the windshield. "You know what happens if you leave the parking brake off? If it's off, take a wild guess."

I shook my head.

"If the parking brake's off, then you're not going to —ing well stay in place, are you, kid? You're going skidding all over the parking lot. You know what falls to the ground in —ing winter? Ice. You know what happens if there's ice on the ground?"

"Ice slips—has low friction," I said. A question scenario I could work out for myself at last. "The car wheels would lose their grip...

"And you'd scatter your blood and brains and guts across the windshield," I finished.

"Somethin' sinking in at last." He glared at me once more. "Now this is what I call the observation part of drivers' ed. Most of the class have done it, so ya get me alone. Feel lucky or what? Luck won't stop you getting in smashups and scattering your blood and brain and guts all over the windshield. I've been in warzones, I know what I'm talking about. Look here. This," he said, "this is the damn parking brake, this is the clutch. This kind, you leave the clutch up. Up is the thing that doesn't mean depressed. This here is the gearbox—and oh, yeah, here's the steering wheel. You getting all this, mister nerd?"

"Yes."

"I drive —dy tanks into Leipzig and this is what I —ing end up doing."

One had to admire the way he slurred parts of his language. He turned the key, starting the car's engine rumbling like a wild beast. He got himself out of the school parking lot and showed a left turn.

_Driving is a form of freedom. Not necessarily for its own sake, but I want to._ I rolled down the passenger's window for the sake of the cool breeze.

_Always look ahead, always look to the sides, look ten seconds ahead on a busy road. You are required to signal 100 feet before you make your change of direction. The indicator light is usually on the left hand of the steering column..._

"And this is how you —ing drive a heavy vehicle! Get in there, stick it in, put the pedal to the metal...and you're driving it like a real man. Or like a real woman, since Dosan's just as good and twice as mean as any man, Anders included. Here at Forks High we don't —ing discriminate based on gender! Except for frail little pansies who take their sweet time figuring how to dodge balls in gym."

I'd had his class today. Some of the marks were still there.

"You got it, nerd? Or do I need to do it again only slower?"

"No thank you, Coach. I've got it." _Calm and compliant._

He stopped it back in place and parked the manual. "Go write that one up," he said, and called through his window at the other students waiting. "Dawn, Callahan, Henderson! Get in, you're next and running out of time. If you think these lessons are free, you're in the wrong class. Hustle, team!"

You could see some of where the captains got it from.

_When it's time for you to merge back in traffic, signal and then enter at the same speed as everyone else..._ I let myself read it.

_Yes, that's it_, I thought. Ms Enn approached. _That's what I'll be for her. It doesn't matter._

—

In the halls the Cullens shone at a safe distance; they were recognizable if nothing else. Bodhi inseparable from an ever-changing coterie, talking of basketball and anything else she wished. Slender, beautiful Veronica and her silent companion Antony carrying books and bag for her while she walked unburdened. Tiny Alora and bearded Killigan.

_They say they're in foster care. I know what that's like._ But I talked to none of them; perhaps it was different for them. Elsewhere in the corridors from time to time were Imogen of the white knight in wire, calm dark Val, mentally sluglike Misha and fair pimpled Erin. Tall broad Sandro Anders yelling at his sports team; Seung Ji Dosan drilling hers over and over with bulldog Maggie in the back. I wouldn't bother to remember names because we'd have to move city and school, but you couldn't entirely ignore it. Curly-haired Monty Black, lurking and scowling with his tough-looking friends. Posters covering bulletin boards like white confetti, _Breaking News! Forks High Chess Team Wins County Tourney!; Crushing Football Victory Over Allyer 6-1; Dosan Promises Upcoming Annihilation Of Olympic Peninsula Women's Amateur Team; Christian Club Prayer Meeting Breakfast; Strong Young Hamsters Free To Good Homes Only; The Fires In Our Hearts: Hard Hitting Journalistic Expose Of Forks Fire Station!; Important Assembly Notice; birdwatching excursion please would you like to come..._

There was an untouched apple in the bin; I'd spent lunch in the library. I wiped it clean on the end of my shirt and bit into it.

"Dude. That's gross." Val, formerly unseen, behind. Two others I didn't know with him, anonymous faces. I backed away. Don't reply at all and they can get bored; or just kneel already. I kept walking.

"Pretending to be deaf."

"Creepy around girls."

"Nobody tell Dosan."

I said nothing. _Oh please, equal opportunity creepy._

"He's crazy."

"What, he only threatens girls?"

"You're not deaf, Swan." There wasn't a simple escape from the three figures. I clutched the hard edge of my bookbag. "Give up the gross habits."

"Please. I have to go," I said.

"We're not stopping you," Val said, gentler-edged than the other two, still cold. "Come on."

One flung a playful slap on my back. "See you in gym." I knew how they meant it: fun to watch and not to be. Hands tight, book's sharp edge and apple juice running down. _They lose interest. Of course they do. Not soon enough._

_No. I really don't care_, I thought. Maybe they were all out to hit me—or maybe not. I stood in a space between lockers on the walls, waiting. _None of them can matter to me. I cannot change any of their concerns and they cannot do the same to me. I've seen worse—but she was with me then—she can't wake up._

_Greyhound buses and stories spun for shelters, sitting among dusty library shelves, hot fields of strawberries, her knowledge and her mind, other worlds and truths of cell and inside and life, her voice reading, always reading and escaping, and she was there and even when she was gone I could think she'd find her way back._

_I opened a door and then there was nothing._

_That's why they can have anything they want. Except for that one thing. _I walked the halls.

—


	7. A Ward

Two eggs, cracked on the side of a white bowl.

Two potatoes, peeled with an orange-handled knife.

One brown onion, the sharp heady smell.

Cold delicate folds of ham, covered ready to be used.

Bright green peppers, vivid as grass.

I hadn't done it for some time now. And it was a form of knowledge that I'd never had from a book. She'd find a fresh market, we'd be in a place with working stove and water, and we would wash and chop and fry and eat together. Years ago.

Oil first, steaming and boiling up. _Oil is more complicated than water; it's a chain of different kinds of things—oh, triglycerides, acids, I think..._

_A big long chain? Like a paper chain?_

_Exactly like a paper chain. And it smokes long before it boils; it has to be heated much hotter than water. But that's not safe to do. There. Give me the butter next. Butter's a kind of oil too._

_Then the 'tatoes first?_

_That's right. Good work. Until they're lightly browned._

Then came the draining. The egg was a liquid and you didn't need to have two liquids at once; I remembered that. Mix them together in the bowl; turn down the stove; a little more oil. Smell the browning potatoes.

Add in the rest. Ham first. _Dangerous if you don't cook it, any meat. Tiny bacteria can live in ham, but enough heat destroys them. We can't be sick. You can't ever be sick._ The meat cooked dark pink; I constantly folded it together.

_Then the rest last._ Bright green pepper and light green onion, fading to dark green and translucent. The egg thickened, becoming solid.

_Why does it go white-yellow? Why isn't it see-through any more?_

_Let's see. There's long chains in egg whites too. The heat changes their shape and they break apart and then come together differently; parts of them thicken and trap water inside, so then you get a white color and a thick shape. And once it's done, you can never go back and change it._

_Never ever?_

_Not any more than you can put a broken eggshell back together._

I flipped it; then I waited too long and smelt it begin to burn on the underside. I scraped the black fragments atop the plate with the rest of it, and washed everything and put it away.

_I really can do this. Of course._

Gordon watched me. "Smells just like... Well. The old days. Very nice. Yes, really." He ate a burned piece of his half on purpose. "Very well done."

"I told you I could do it." It doesn't matter what you eat as long as it won't poison you; but besides the burned bits it tasted like those times.

_With her_. I looked aside and remembered to fall silent.

"_Tortilla de patata_," he mispronounced on purpose. He waited as if he wanted something else from me. "Well," he said, voice growing indistinct with chewing, "I stand by my words. Nicely done and cooked."

"I liked the rissoles," I said. I didn't remember how they'd tasted last night, but I thought it might have been close enough to what was wanted.

"I told you so," he said. "We should do more—better to practice, and better for the diet." He patted his stomach. "Cut back on the donuts—not that there's a real donut store here."

"Yes, cut back," I said absently.

"If I gave you money, would you go to the store and get what you need for this?" Gordon said. "Over by the main road—closer than the school."

"There's plenty in the refrigerator. We have to eat it before it turns bad," I said. He'd bought too many ingredients; fry them together and they would last days longer. Everything should be eaten if it was possible. I could do that tonight. "We can't waste anything."

Gordon sighed. "All right. Come ask me for food money when you need some."

"We're going tomorrow, aren't we?" I repeated.

"Yes. Of course," he said.

"No murders," I said.

He shifted his head to one side. "I was being facetious. You do realize that, right? You don't expect big city problems in Forks," he said firmly. "Dosan's keeping things running for the day. A bit of a slob—but he's a brave man for all that. His kid's in your grade, isn't she? Could be one up or one down, I guess. A sweet, soft-spoken young lady who couldn't startle a chipmunk if she tried. Keen on sports lately, I'm told."

"I don't know many people."

Gordon spoke a while longer on the opposite of Mom's instructions, then let me go. I read and went through Ms Harper's questions, then tied off the doorknob and turned off the lights; I was going tomorrow, and that was the important thing.

The Forks rain poured down the windscreen, and then on the ferry the sun broke out. Gordon drove up along the freeways—gear change, indicator, brake—the truck kept under the speed limit, the engine almost too loud to talk.

"You can't sit still," he said to me above the noise. "_Still_." He laughed once at his own joke. He'd been in a mood for quiet; slightly grim. _Your mother's ill and not at fault for that_, he'd repeat; that was true.

_I could have done something, anything, different to save her. She kept me safe for years._

I knew the address by heart; Gordon opened a large map to find roads he'd already marked out, and drove more slowly on the last part of the route. I found myself drumming my heels under the seat. At last we were in the driveway I knew, and his watch gave the time as the earliest it could be to spend the most time here. I got out.

"You don't think she'd want to see me," Gordon said. I shook my head. "I'll find myself something to do here. You don't go wandering anywhere else, and when I come to pick you up if I don't find you in the lobby I'll call the Seattle police." He handed over his cell. "You know what to do if you have any trouble."

The truck left, rumbling. I dropped the phone into my bag, wishing for no further delay.

_But she'd want quiet and calm—many ill people here—_

A security guard took me in, inspecting identification and rifling through possessions. Plastic potplants and clean plastic floors and dull older paint on the walls. An older man walking the corridors asked me about bats on my shoulders. I knew where she'd be. The doors buzzed open by keycard.

Someone had cut her hair short above her shoulders, leaving it messy instead of smooth and waving. Her clothes were wrinkled, off-centre, and she didn't care any more. She was awake on a chair in the shared room, but her eyes didn't see me. She was still as stone, hands folded and breath slow. Another woman slept in a bed with curtains three-quarters closed; one of the facility stood and watched us.

"I told you I'd come back. I promised, Mom. I wrote to you." They'd given her a grey plastic stand of drawers, with nothing there I could recognise as personal: soft-tined comb, sealed packet of tissues. I put the letters out for her; she'd want them neatly stacked. There was still nothing I could find behind her eyes. She barely blinked. "I'll keep coming. When you're back again you'll... You won't like that I called them, but I did it because I thought you were dying. I didn't save you."

It had to be her dreams that took her, for all that she showed now was grey. Because I saw much of the same.

They kept her locked up here. I touched her shoulder; she didn't move. Behind us I heard the guard shift and cough and watch.

She used to dress carefully; her books were more important but she'd wash and dry and press her set of clothes with whatever she had on hand, join on buttons and smooth it all down before she went out.

I picked up the comb. "Here. I'll do it for you. Don't worry, I won't pull on any knots." Her hair was slightly greasy, unwashed; the comb was gentle and bent easily. The man watching kept his eyes on us. I slowly brushed her hair, honey-colored waves starting to fall back the way they should. From above I could almost imagine they hadn't changed her. I talked to her, not about anything important; once she breathed out loudly, almost like the start of a word. The comb ran evenly down to her shoulders and back again.

Then I sat beside her and opened the other thing they hadn't confiscated from me at the desk.

"You used to do this for me," I said, and began to read the tattered words. It was long.

"Call me Ishmael..."

—

"You have to go." The ticking clock on the wall was forty minutes early. The man put a hand on my shoulder.

I wrenched myself away. "Let me go. I know it's not time—I'm supposed to be here—" My mother twitched a hand. I watched her eyes in case she understood.

"Your father's waiting." He leaned close over me.

_She wanted to escape from Gordon, don't make her think that everything's wrong—_ But she still hadn't reacted.

"Stop it. Tell him to wait. It's not fair. He promised. Don't touch me—"

The book fell on the floor. His hands were everywhere; he dragged me away from her, while she still waited and stared—

"I can have you kicked out of here for good, or you can choose to stop causing trouble." The hands locked on my arm. I could smell his thick deodorant.

_I want to stop him. I want to hurt him. I'm sorry, Mom..._

I let myself go limp as if I could feel nothing. He let me fall to the ground and scrabble for the book. "Hurry up," he said.

"Please don't touch me," I said. I got away from him to stand. "I'll do it. I'll do it on my own."

"Acts like he belongs here as much as her," I heard the guard say, opening the door. And still my mother stared into space.

"I'll be back. I have to be back..."

"Get outta here."

Gordon was pacing, carrying the phone he'd lent me. "You promised," I said. "Can't you leave me here? There was supposed to be more time—"

"I don't have a lot of time now. Get in the truck. Let the explanation wait." He flicked a button on his radio. "Over, Dosan. Three hours."

"I don't care," I said.

"And I don't care whether you sulk this time, I've a job to do," Gordon said curtly, and made me follow. "Dosan? You do it, clearance to go ahead—"

He drove quickly, much more so than to come, speaking quietly and listening to radio bursts interspersed with static. I caught some words: _evacuation, hospital, Cullen, squad..._ Gordon was utterly focused on radio and road, glaring ahead and speaking his orders straight into the device close to his face.

"Get the—" Inaudible. "—on post," he said. "Keep—" I missed it over the engine. "...by the payphone, stores..."

I listened. _It doesn't matter to me; he tore me away from Mom..._ I heard him speak of a bomb squad.

_That's...more than a little unusual. Someone blowing up Forks? I'd lose books..._

The truck rattled on without a break, the route different to the way there. Someone at the hospital, the Cullen fundraiser; difficulty evacuating the patients in the surgical wards; the FBI moving in. Searching for the device or was it just a prank. He'd switch between Dosan and someone he called Agent Mainwaring. Deadline an hour.

You could tell this sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen in Forks. We'd taken about half the time of the journey there when Gordon relaxed, only slightly. Something had apparently been found and removed.

"Gas stations, Dosan. Some terrorist comes to our town and— Visitors. What's the roadblock status?"

Someone'd phoned in some sort of ransom message, I'd heard. A man talking low-voiced—almost too low. Money transferred, or else the people at the hospital fundraiser would be blown up.

"They should be doing a double sweep. Keep me posted." He switched channels. "Yes. After the north turnoff the next one's three miles down. There's a beachside hotel. South's the reservation way. Correct. Out." He took a moment to look across to me. "Nobody's hurt. Nothing to be afraid of, Xavier. You stay here, keep on being quiet, and try not to listen in." He drove on, the radio firing.

"Dosan? ...Good. Park? The animal pattern—unlikely, but pass on the files. Check on the tourists and speak to all the rangers you can, on duty today or yesterday. Someone made that call from our town and got in. Hospital security's got a major problem somewhere. Hessen's the one with the record, give it to Mainwaring pronto..."

The names weren't familiar to me; they looked for the one who'd phoned in the bomb threat, someone who'd planted a device by breaking into the function room in advance. A genuine bomb.

_No, you _really_ don't expect that. Is this entirely real?_

Jenessa said once that her biological father had people shot; and that he was there at the fundraiser. I searched for conspiracy theories; I did that too often; what was more likely to be real...

Gordon looked real enough, driving and listening above the static. The trees began to look more like the Forks forests; moist subdued green. _Things happen all across America. Why not here?_ Nobody was harmed...

In the town itself Gordon pulled on the brakes, the truck loudly complaining. He briefly swore at the gas, the gauge having been zero for the past half hour.

"Keep the doors locked on the inside and you stay in the truck," he said, a strong nail-studded violet color to his words. "I have to do my job here. Read your book. Give me a call when you need me. If you see anyone you don't know or acting strange, use the phone."

This was close to the few stores that made up Forks' town centre. In the distance I could see other cars parked; two large vans in smooth navy, a police cruiser. Gordon went up and joined another officer, walking rapidly off with him. The streets were empty and a police line was wound between some trees. I didn't know where the hospital was from here; some distance outside the town itself, I'd gathered, its own large building.

_The truth is that I can't expect to know; I don't know this place._ Bodhi Cullen came too close; she'd not blow herself up for a sense of amusement. That would be...crazy. I laughed. Jenessa Jansen, cyborg terrorist. _She probably wouldn't do more than scare them._

_If you really wanted to blow someone up, would you call them first?_ The man had called from near here, wanting money. _Asking for money. A difference._

I was curious. I'd met people who would mess you up in far worse ways than any school bully could threaten; meth users with no teeth; people who saw you as nothing more than an obstacle in their path, or as only a body. Someone tried to blow up a hospital. I let myself out of the truck.

Nobody stood around; quiet as death. Forks Bottle Shop, Forks General Store, Forks Sporting Goods. It was still very quiet as I wandered around the backs of the buildings, watching plumbing drains and graffiti and dirt irregularly kicked up. I saw a uniformed woman on the other side beyond a line, walking up and down; I got out of her view. Then I saw the phone booth by the store, messy; I'd heard Gordon speak of how it had already been investigated.

_Call for the ransom and run for it._ I could see from the outside that the phone hung off its hook, whether that was how the caller had left it or no. Labels and tags were stuck inside: _government do not touch_. I decided against it, observed or otherwise.

Bins had been emptied, checked and tagged; a scooter and a rusty bike were together in a rack. Almost a ghost town. _You probably wouldn't stay around to get caught. They've only fenced it just in case._ I looked up at the empty stores; it was easier to get to know them this way. There were trees just beyond the shadow of the general store. I saw a quick movement like a stain of black running through the treetops, and I jumped. That wasn't any kind of animal; or... I hadn't read those glossy guides to the local wildlife in the library. I stepped back to cross the circle of trees to the other side. _Squirrel, chipmunk, magpie? _The eaves of the sports store creaked above. The circle of the forest came around here, to the footpath that led back to the stores. The wind blew a stray advertising pamphlet further away from me.

I looked left, and saw Bodhi Cullen standing between forest and pavement. She didn't notice me until several moments later, then tensed as if she wanted to run away. I took a step back from her.

She made a hand gesture, looking shocked and startled, and came toward me. I held up my hands. "What the fuck are you doing here, you asshole? Don't you know not to sneak up on people, retard? Fuck you!"

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"What, some asshole tried to blow us to Cincinnati and I'm not allowed to be curious? Hey, that's actually the truth!" She shifted poise on long, sharp heels slightly stained by grass and dirt. "You tell me or I'll make you, goatfucker. Oh. Oh, right. Your daddy. Good ol' Chief Swan dragging the unwanted offspring around. Silly me." Today there was no trace of color in her eyes: black as if her pupils had dilated to fill her iris, or as if she'd chosen new contact lenses. She spoke in that accent of hers that wasn't quite American, but her voice was neutrally toned enough that it was impossible to identify. Her formal dress glittered: long scraps of black material wound around her body and ornamented with dark reflective stones, fishnet stockings below it. She was all black and white, dark lipstick staining her mouth and mascara smudged around her black eyes.

She swayed toward me; she kept changing directions, as if it wasn't possible to escape from her. "You shouldn't be alone out here, boy. Hell, I shouldn't be alone out here."

"I don't...care what you do or don't do." Obviously I wasn't curious enough to ask questions of her. She still hated; I'd agreed to stay away from her.

"Stupid pathetic asslicker," Bodhi said, and wiped a black-colored sleeve across her mouth.

"Freeze where you are!"

"Oh _shit_," Bodhi said, and reached out and shoved me backward far more quickly than I could dodge. I fell against someone else—someone warm and slightly plump—and then she'd run between the trees. A woman I'd never seen before pointed a taser close to my ribs.

"Hands where I can see them. Drop your weapons. Get off me." The woman got to her feet. The weapon was real enough. She threatened, and that meant she wouldn't, as long as I paid attention. I stayed very still.

She was older, my mother's age or so, wearing a plain blue skirt and professional shirt. She spoke into a radio after I'd raised empty hands. "Pike here, Arthur. Agent Wilson. Apprehended a suspect; a second fled; send someone to likely rendezvous point zero-eight-two. White female dressed in black. And fishnet stockings. Suspect here Hispanic male...teenager? Bringing him in." She paused and waited for a response. "_Ah_. Yeah, green shirt, jeans—somewhat holey I might add—light hair. Name of Xavier? Something tells me you're in serious trouble, young man." She lowered the weapon. "You're coming with me. Stupid, boneheaded—well, I'll leave that to your father." She flashed identification in the name of Marie Pike.

She took me back and down in a slow, shameful walk. Bodhi was there, too, protesting loudly against being caught; a tall police officer stood by her, listening to her rant with an impressively imaginative combination of curses. Gordon's anger was turned toward me.

"Dosan, take them both to the station," he said. "We'll decide later how seriously we take interfering with a federal investigation."

"It's your fault, wetshit dickwad!" Bodhi hissed at me, leaning against the seatbelt she'd been reminded to fasten. "God, do you even know how fucking dumb you are? Stupid retard asshole, I hope you fucking choke on a thick log of—"

"Now, now, Miss Cullen," Dosan said, a smirk below his voice. He was a big man, though slightly run down. I thought I saw something vaguely sharklike about his smile. "Didn't your parents ever tell you to speak cleaner language?"

"Oh, fuck you too, I'm telling my brother," Bodhi said, and folded her arms and refused to speak any more. It was rather restful.

_Are they going to lock us up? For...good?_

_Like Ms Enn said?_

I tried not to think about it. Locked up, somewhere away from my mother.

"Bloody kids," Dosan joked. "Snuck off to Makeout Point right in the middle of a terrorist threat. Like to know how you got there so fast, Miss Cullen. Got your license on you?"

She sniffed and said nothing.

"And you're the infamous Xavier," Dosan continued, adjusting his mirror to watch us both. "Criminal tendencies from your mom's side of the family?"

_No._ I said nothing either, in case of getting it very wrong. Fear already spun thick in my head.

"Neither of you talking? Pity," Dosan said. "Heard the one about the fish and the nun and—"

"_Officer_," Bodhi interrupted sweetly. "I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm really sorry I poked around, so if you could _please_ just let me go and I'm totally sure my big brother'll square it all later—you can take Chief Swan's kid, though, have you got any cells with rats in them? Big juicy black rats crawling over people's—anyway, Officer Dosan, I'd like it a lot if you stopped the car and let me out, especially before you tell any more jokes, I'd be very grateful..."

"The Chief would know. The feds would know," Dosan said to himself. "Sorry, Miss Cullen. Got to do my job."

"Oh, come on. Please?" she said, as if she honestly thought that would change him. He shook his head slowly.

"My...job. And here we are."

"Fuck it, you're stubborn as Dosan at school, and isn't she a flaming bitch with her head stuck up her arse. _Oh, Bodhi, you just can't handle competition if you won't join my precious fucking soccer team of the flaming bulldykes._ If I tried I'd kick her across two soccer fields running—" Bodhi said, and left a dent in the side of the police cruiser by kicking it with a stiletto heel. Dosan whistled a short, brief tune, smiled vaguely at her despite the damage, and led us inside a building I'd never been before.

"Lauren, get these two in the holding cell," Dosan said. "Yellow forms. They're wanted for a bit of mischief—going places beyond the police line. Book 'em, ma'am." He saluted the younger policewoman, who smiled back at him, and ambled back out. The door closed and sealed itself behind him.

Bodhi glared. "Please put me in a separate cell from _him_," she said, and started to look frightened and very small. The officer gave her a sympathetic glance and directed an angry stare at me.

Of course there weren't rats. It was a small plain room that could have been someone's bedroom: a bench covered by a thin blanket, a small glass window, a working sink. The door locked from the outside.

Time passes. While you have a mind you can't be bored. _Lock me up for good somewhere in a crowd of people._

_Exactly like what he let happen to Mom._

Three paces by five, rectangle, about eight foot high. Newer bricks, not an old building. Fairly warm. Hardly any way to hear anything going on outside. I paced. _I was stupid, and it won't be Ms Enn who takes away everything from me after all. I should have brought medicine with me. At least I'd be calmer._

_However long it is it feels like eternity because you don't know how long it last._

_You're not sorry, you're sorry you were caught._ Too many moralistic books to count. Nothing else mattered more than taking care of my mother; no abstract code. No risk of cell worse than hospice, there was nothing stopping them from doing the same as the time after finding my mother impossible to wake, the open door and then the orange plastic floors and knowing what to lose everything felt like, the reason why nothing else at Forks had any power to hurt me.

_I know it's getting worse. I know I'm making it worse. If I could breathe I would—think about otherwheres—_

My thoughts flew left-half into other places.

—

A/N: FBI agents Mainwaring, Wilson and Pike may or may not bear a certain resemblance to namesakes from a show that rhymes with Dad's Barmy.


	8. Committed Committee

"Glass of water? You're not looking so well." It was another one, an older officer, V. Violet on her nametag. "Your dad said to give you these."

Pills I'd left in the truck. It had grown dark outside through the window; I'd walked up and down over and over again. The woman was dark and light at the same time, passing through shadows that changed around her; blue shifted to dark red. I watched the open door behind her.

"Done. Good idea," I said, drinking. After dark means two and one. Hold to that. Bats' wings unfurled in my head like empty shadows. I shook my head.

"When you're ready," she said easily, as if she'd been asked to be kind about it. It would be better to be out of the room; I followed her down past the offices.

There were a crowd of people working in the police station rooms; papers and coffee spills were everywhere underfoot.

"Wilson! I want barbed wire on the park gates—"

"Are you sure that's wise, sir?"

"Mainwaring, I've run the explosion specs and crunched the numbers—" Marie Pike said, holding up a large laptop computer. "Could have been worse. Profiling says amateur—"

"This way." They sat both Bodhi and me in another small room—and my father talked to us.

Irresponsibility, stupidity, safety, could have been hurt, consider yourselves lucky that Ms Pike is not interested in calling assault of a federal agent, could have run into the terrorist himself, playing detective, town was not made for your benefit, pointless, waste of time and money, completely foolish, useless to everyone including yourself. Bodhi tried to speak several times, but each of them she was cut off and silenced. She folded her arms and started to look miserable below the barrage. Gordon made me feel it, too. Some of the sarcasms were well-thought-out and had me cut to a quick I hadn't thought could still hurt me.

_But he's not going to keep us locked up_, I thought with hope when he revealed it. _This is all it is._

At last it came to an end.

"Your brother's here to collect you, Bodhi," Gordon said coldly. "Survivor or no, I don't ever—_ever_—want to see you brought up here on potential charges again. Understood?"

"Gosh, Chief Swan," Bodhi said, pouting out her lower lip. "I guess the stress of nearly being blown up really got to me, huh."

Gordon didn't respond to that, and led her out. I saw the man who waited for Bodhi: there was a family resemblance in pale skin and fever-gold eyes. _No. Fever's the wrong metaphor by far._ Jon Cullen was controlled to the last moment of a breath and ice cold and—almost frightening, to me, in only the few sentences he spoke. He barely looked at me.

"Thank you for collecting my...wayward sister, Chief Swan."

"This isn't the first time I've met her in my job, Doctor," Gordon said. "Interfering in a federal investigation can be a very serious matter. I'd prefer not to have to see Bodhi again."

"I'll ensure that she understands the seriousness of her error," Jon Cullen said. "Though I'm afraid my wife is more the disciplinarian of our household." Bodhi scowled behind her brother's back and said nothing.

"This incident has made us all very distressed," the doctor said. He barely moved even to speak; he held himself stiff, his suit crisped and pressed and a perfect clean white. His pale boots stood clean on the dirty floor; I could imagine them frost-rimed and so cold that none would dare stand where he had trodden lest they should lose that limb to ice— Probably not real. "We expect our safety," he said. "We expect that of our hospital. We expect this investigation, at least, to guarantee success. Do you understand?"

"We'll do all we can to uphold the law," Gordon said. Jon Cullen stared stonily back at him.

"It was appropriate to lay no charges against my sister on this very traumatic day," he said. "If you would like any additions to the statements your officers have taken, by no means hesitate to contact me. Good day."

"I'm taking you home," Gordon said to me. "Ye gods, Xavier, what possessed you... Just get in the car." He opened up the police cruiser. It was dark inside, and smelt of the takeaway package of fish and chips that lay on the seat. "I'm not only your father. This is my job, and anyone, any kid lurking on a crime scene— You could have been shot, and not just by some terrorist either— What can I do to make it sink in? It wasn't just you. Jon and Ellie might be upstanding contributors to the community, but there's something wrong with that girl."

"People know that about me as well," I said.

"That's different. Bodhi Cullen's a spoiled rich kid who's likely never heard the word no in her life," Gordon said.

_Yet maybe I doubt that, with her cold-eyed brother... _I thought, then decided I didn't care. The dark of the night closed in on me.

"You know her at school?" he asked suspiciously.

"No. Not really."

"Good. She's headed down the wrong road and I wouldn't advise you to influence each other—which happened today, didn't it?" he said.

"Not exactly. I didn't know she was there until I did," I said, which wasn't clear at all; I was tired.

"You did the same thing, and it was my job to treat you equally," Gordon said. "That's the reason why I penalised you the way I did: I had a job to do before I could get back to you, and I wanted you both to get the point. This is serious and I don't want you involved in my work, Xavier."

He gave a sigh and rubbed his eyes. "I had my say. I won't start yelling again. Hell on the throat. Could you pass me the water bottle?"

I did.

"I'll give you the house keys, then I'm going back out. I doubt I'll be home much in the next few days. I'll leave you enough money to order pizza. Call me at eleven tomorrow and let me know how you're doing. I don't want to hear that you're anywhere near what we're doing—or the Cullen kids for that matter. Got it?"

_Rather that than be locked up._ "Certainly," I said, through teeth that clattered together. I closed my eyes, and the car jolted to a stop.

"Go get some sleep," Gordon said.

—

They gathered the whole school on the first morning of the next week. I couldn't avoid it, because Gordon was there in official capacity. He'd ironed the uniform half an hour ago. A large gathering; all talking, shuffling, moving, yelling, Imogen Winthrop jostling her way to the front by her elbows with a notebook and pen in hand—but it went quiet for the grey-haired man on the rough bandstand outside, my father beside him.

I'd seen the old man before: buried in his own books behind the desk in the school library, kind enough not to look up. He spoke in a slow pearly voice through a microphone, half-mumbled.

_A crowd, but they're somewhat quiet and I'm in the back. Nothing wrong with that._

"Over the weekend our community was troubled. We were attacked by a person or persons unknown. You may have heard rumours of this that we must quell by only the truth. No person was hurt or injured, and we pray that this may continue. We have a strong community in Forks and in this school, and we ask that you keep all your daily activities without fear. You can come and talk to us.

"Oh yes. We cancelled today's nature day but Mrs Cullen has kindly agreed to come next week. Thank you." He turned to go and saw Gordon beside him. "And also, Chief Swan has a few words."

Gordon briefly outlined what had happened and said the police were actively following leads. If anyone has additional information, even if it may seem unimportant, do not keep it to oneself but to authorities...

"And there will be free counseling sessions for all who need to process their feelings at this trauma," Ms Enn said, taking over the microphone the moment he was done. She looked sweet and kind, hearthfire rather than the burning bars of a closed cell. "Go to the orange noticeboard to find your slot. My office is always open."

And my own appointment was cancelled for the week. It was a good beginning.

—YEAH. THIS DOESN'T REALLY HAPPEN IN FORKS, Jenessa typed. I sat beside her near the ramp, at the morning break. DID I OR DID I NOT ONCE USE THE PHRASE, MY BIODAD IS A COMPLETELY LEGITIMATE ITALIAN-AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN?

_Only the last three words_, I wrote back.

WHATEVER, SEE? CRIME TOTALLY DOESN'T PAY. NOT HIS KIND, ANYWAY. I KNOW WHAT HE'S LIKE.

_He doesn't know people in Los Angeles, does he?_ I thought of asking. Gordon had let slip that was a lead for the makers; the ransom bank account had been even further afield, the Caribbean.

BUT THEN AGAIN, HE WOULDN'T WANT TO BLOW HIMSELF UP, Jenessa typed. WISHFUL THINKING, WHATEVER.

_Do you know any stories about Bodhi Cullen's brother?_

I'VE BEEN TO HIM. HE REALLY KNOWS HIS STUFF. NICER THAN HER, I GUESS. KIND OF CHARMING. WHY?

_He doesn't look nice. Or charming._

WELL, HE'S A SURGEON AND YOU'RE LOONY, SO HE PROBABLY WON'T BE THE ONE TO TREAT YOUR COMPLAINTS.

_Good. I don't want to..._

_Like that one called Doctor Fell_, I thought.

"Heya! Hey, Jen!" Imogen Winthrop interrupted, skipping up the ramp with her notebook in hand. "How're you and the kids?"

"Good." Jenessa could speak simple words when she was out of class, though probably more slowly than she could summon them on her screen.

"Heard Jeremiah came second in the spelling bee—"

Jenessa typed furiously in reply. OH, SHUT IT, IM, I KNOW WHY YOU'RE HERE.

Imogen lifted her left hand up to fiddle with her earlobe. "Yeah, yeah, _that_," she said. "Exclusive interview, Jen? I just bet not many people've figured out that your father just happened to be on the guest list of Cullen veeps—"

OFFICER DOSAN CAME AROUND TO US YESTERDAY.

"Yeah, but, y'know, _press_." Imogen scribbled something down. "Mister Vincente Valeriani, businessman, valued sponsor of the Los Angeles Wildcats. I totally do my research. Um, did he come and see you after?"

NO, HE GOT THE HELL OUT OF TOWN.

"Yeah, he sucks," Imogen said. "Phone you? Email you?"

PRETTY DELIVERED FLOWERS AND SHORT REGRETS FROM HIS OFFICE BUNNY.

"Right. Not much detail there of the three m's—means, motives, and opportunity, three tips of good detective reporting. Was he there when the phone call came? Did he see everyone else on the guest list when the phone call came? Because if someone just happened to slip off before things were planned to go off, that's how it'd work in an Agatha Christie and they'd have a really clever way of making people think they were there the whole time—"

I DON'T KNOW, IM. GO ASK THE COPS.

"Now you're just being mean." Imogen stuck out her tongue; Jenessa seemed to laugh at her.

GOOD THEORY, THOUGH. EXCEPT FOR A PUBLIC PHONE BOX—MY BIODAD WOULDN'T TOUCH THOSE. GONE PESTERING THE CULLENS YET?

"Duh, they were my first step, being there and all, and Doctor Jon sent 'em to school today," Imogen said. "But Bodhi was the only one who'd really talk to me, and the most plausible theory out of the fifty-nine hundred she gave me was that _he_ did it!" She pointed to me.

"So, what's the latest from the police investigation?" she said.

"I have an alibi."

"Sure you do, weirdo, sure you do." Imogen turned over another page of her notebook. "And where were you at oh-one-oh-two at the time of the fateful phone call?"

"With my mother."

"And you think you had an alibi for the night before too, huh? Very suspicious to me. The one who did it's always the one who brings up the alibi first. So really, who's your dad going after for it?"

"He said I shouldn't talk about it. Your name was specifically mentioned." I wished she'd go away; I didn't like her, but this time she wasn't trying to grab my arm.

Imogen sighed theatrically. "And it's this again, huh? I knew I shouldn't have tried to do undercover research disguised as a new typist intern. It's tough work being a daring girl student reporter for the Forks High School Times when nobody wants to report to you. I feel so alone and lonely all the time, Jen, all, y'know, depressed and isolated..."

She paused to wave to a boy who yelled a greeting to her.

STOP THE TEARS, SALLY HEARTBREAKER, Jenessa typed.

"Just one more thing." Imogen flipped through her notebook for a list heavily surrounded by writing and crosses-out. "I'm getting at the guest list. Your biodad, the Cullens, the other rich 'n elite they hobnobbed with, Troy Thompson—and I can't believe they got an actual movie star, it's not fair he wasn't giving public autographs or anything, he's a totally lame second-rate B-movie actor who isn't even pretty anyway—some biotech company people, philanthropist Mister Cragg, Doctor Reid and Doctor Paul I found out through hospital staff who got to chat with 'em...anyone else you might've heard about?"

NAH, JUST SOME BORING BUSINESS GUYS.

"Okay. Thanks for helping!" Imogen slammed her notebook shut. "See, I have this theory that it was actually someone who wanted to discredit the Cullens, maybe 'cause what they'd promised for the fundraiser would've bankrupted them and so they got to give up donating to an unsafe hospital. Or maybe it was someone who only wanted one of the guests dead and didn't care how many other people they got—

"It's kind of sad really," Imogen said, more slowly. "It's a hospital, heaps of people would've been hurt. Maybe they had a last-minute attack of conscience and phoned because they wanted to save people instead and would've sent the ransom to other hospitals. So it wasn't a sad ending this time."

YEAH, IMOGEN. BOMBINGS KIND OF TEND TO BE SAD, Jenessa told her.

"Le Capitana Obvious strikes again. See ya, Jen! I'm gonna corner Ronnie in the girls' bathrooms and see what she remembers with a little incentive." She bounced away through the sunshine, blending into another group of students and waving to tall Misha on the other side of the grounds.

"Probably grab her arm until she shakes her loose," I said.

OH, MISS IMOGEN CAN BE SUBTLE IN THE FINER ARTS OF INTERROGATION, Jenessa wrote. ONE TIME SHE...

I wasn't in the mood for a long story. _Probably time for class again_, I wrote back.

Chromosomes in Ms Harper's class, interesting questions, and quiet as any other time Bodhi wasn't there. I put her easily from my mind. It was a clear-headed day; I'd slept a lot over the remainder of the weekend.

"Xavier, would you like to pledge to the hospital flower fund?" Maggie Fenton brandished a clipboard and tin collection jar outside trig. "The Student Council voted this morning to collect funds for a wreath to the hospital and a card for Doctor Cullen to show our support, and if we reach our target then extra sums will be used on bouquets for the patients. And that's not the limit of our fundraising scheme to show our community that attacks can only make the town of Forks stronger..."

"No thanks."

"Your father volunteered you this morning," she said crisply. "He liked the concept of our initial fundraising brainstorms, and I agree it would be good for you to help in some way that you can feel comfortable with. You must have some skills—getting things off high shelves for a start." She looked up at me, smiling complacently. "So come to the lunch meeting and meet our other auxiliary volunteers. At the moment we're hesitating between a car wash and engraved bricks." Then she turned too quickly to march to her next class.

_Like being steamrollered by...a small red-haired Napoleon._

"Bodhi doesn't want to talk to you," a voice said behind me. For the moment there were three of us between the classrooms. Two out of Jamie-and-Jason-and-Rick-and-something-else: boys in gym class, boys among those around her when she walked the halls.

"Happy that you drove her out of bio, stalker?" said the second.

_I should say whatever words they want._ "I didn't want that either."

"You got arrested together," the first said, angry. "You think she wasn't trying to get away from you, creep?"

_Her behaviour, while admittedly falling far short of the opposite impression, was also not completely suggestive of that implication..._ I thought.

"I'm sorry."

"Really not good enough," I heard, and a hand hit me into the grey-painted wall. But they were moving out, footsteps away; they weren't going to continue it.

_Unimportant._ I left in the opposite direction.

—

A/N: Description of Jon references a Baldur's Gate description of him.


	9. Oneirophobia

"—Yes, exactly," Maggie Fenton said. She looked benevolently in my direction. "You may not know this, Xavier, but Forks Hospital is one of the best in the state. They airlift people into it just to benefit from the surgical expertise of doctors like Doctor Cullen and the state-of-the-art medical equipment—much of which he donated from his own pocket. It's an immense asset to the community, and as the Forks High Student Council we have a responsibility to support our hospital and a great opportunity to involve the town as a whole. All members in favour allow the Secretary to note down your votes." Imogen wrote down the names, sticking out her tongue at the corner of her mouth.

_I wouldn't have wanted to go to this but it doesn't seem so bad._ Val sat back next to Maggie, relaxed; on his other side a blonde girl from the soccer team rested her head on her right hand as if in deep thought.

"We'll need a clearing subcommittee, a design subcommittee, a building subcommittee, and oversight," Maggie continued. "On the day, we'll need volunteers to run it, but that can be placed to a later agenda. We need..."

"What jobs are there?" Val prompted.

"Very good, Val. We'll start a comprehensive list—appoint volunteers based on aptitude—" Imogen yawned loudly, spinning her pen in the air in a series of complicated sketches, creating strange faces and sideways infinities. "Order, people," Maggie said. "We've made a productive start. First we need strong people to clear the place..."

Misha raised his hand. "Good," Maggie said. "Coach Kagin says we're right to use the shed on the north side of the field as long as we move the baseball equipment to the front. Clearing subcommittee, headed by...Misha's an auxiliary volunteer, so it'll have to be you, Val. Thank you. Then there'll be painting and setup tasks in line with the output of the design committee. Imogen, you'll be on that one..."

Lift boxes from one end of the school to the other. Easy; simple; would have been easier still if not for Maggie's devoted progress inquiries, but she was the sort of person who needed something to do or someone to give orders to.

_I don't volunteer for things. It attracts attention._ Ms Enn passed out worksheets, seemingly distracted in her classes, and I hoped that would last. _I will have to go to her and I will also see my mother again._ I escaped in the afternoons to write and read by the graveyard under the trees, and slipped back in the house before dark, when Gordon might be home.

"They're focusing in on suspect groups from interstate," he said briefly. "You could say we're down to a code yellow. Don't repeat any of this, even if most of it might be over the town by now."

"Would I get arrested again if I did?" I speared a takeaway dim sum with a chopstick.

"You weren't arrested. Detained."

"Locked up."

"Yes, if you're trespassing beyond police lines and it's the best way that strikes me to keep you safe," Gordon said. He laid his hands on the table. "You know much about your rights? I'll tell you about them. You can be held for the time to conduct an investigation, or long enough to wait for your guardians if you're a minor." He stood up and fumbled among papers and booklets between bookends on a shelf, and put down a small booklet on the table. "I don't expect you to get into more trouble, but I'd want you to know how to protect yourself."

_Law Enforcement - Citizen's Guide._ _If you know how to protect yourself..._ That gave me ideas.

"And I never got the chance to ask you how Cat—how your mother was doing," he said.

"The same as the last time."

"Oh. She's...well, though?" Gordon said. "Physically, I mean."

"Yes."

_I still don't want to talk about her with you._

He looked at me. "Ms Pike at work was right," he said eventually, pushing aside the remains on his plate. "Scruffy shirt, holey jeans—I think we'll have to go shopping. When things die down a touch more."

"I could do that."

"I need new shirts and socks myself," Gordon said. "Folk will think that I can't take care of you."

_Because of course others' idle speculations matter._ "I have no reason to object," I said, and saw Gordon's jaw tighten.

"Could you try to phrase it normally?" he asked. "I understand you well enough, don't think I don't, but there's no need to say it as if you want to be misunderstood."

"Okay. Okay?" I said.

"That'll have to do."

Plywood walls were supposed to be painted a dark grey at school after Misha's ability to drag heavy trolleys had done most of the clearing, one hour after classes. My hands dragged the brush down, one line after the next; repetitive work left your mind free, and this was easy, shorter than other things I'd done. This was one thing that the medication might make easier, I noticed: working and letting it continue without breaking one's head to stop wanting to wander off to change. Sticking to one topic at a time could be good or could be narrow; without crossover and change there would be nothing but grey straight lines. Images and ideas sparked and fed against each other like hungry electricity: like a bubbling double helix and words from Ms Harper, like a wild white space of irrational asynchronous rhythm throwing off the shackles of structure for a moment to make the lines stronger.

"You really don't talk much," Val said, and straightened up where he painted beside me. Steel-grey streaks lined the side of his cheek like a tiger's stripes. He'd managed to break the threads.

"You say you don't."

"No. It's...relaxing." His brush ran evenly down the side of his; he worked about the same speed as me. "Maggie finds more to say than I ever have. And sometimes, she's very right."

"About what?"

"About leaping to conclusions. About judging by small signs instead of a whole," Val said. "Everyone's got a chance here."

"Chance is the one thing you can't take away from anyone," I rambled. "One molecule vibrates the wrong way—the unexpected happens—" _Like a brief glitch in a brain._ "You're stopped from controlling someone's future, even though you might try to bias it in some way—things can always be different. Chance is new again every moment and every second."

"Very sci-fi," Val said. He turned back to painting. "You think aliens would be good? For the Haunted House, I mean. Little green men." His brush pointed to the plain walls. Maggie Fenton wanted an elaborate fictioned maze eventually, with plastic spiders, cobwebs, and a hospital horror room or two to raise money on her theme.

"Grey men with big eyes aren't very scary," I said. "If there were things in the stars I don't think they'd look like us at all, or understand anything that mattered to us. Maybe black bridges that can span from there to here because their whole self is big enough to cross the time and space between. Maybe space jellyfish floating in the void with pinpricks of stars reflected inside them. Angels who move like light because they are light, four faces on burning wheels inside wheels, a thousand peacock eyes on fire. Or golden ships flying with the sound of a sky storm and raining red spears the size of cities and buzzing bees flying from brass mouths... There are some things that are strange because they're _really _strange, more than just someone's reflection half-seen in a mirror before you're properly awake. Books."

"You believe in that stuff?" Val said slowly.

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I try to only believe in what I can see or hear. It doesn't matter." I'd said far too much.

And the scary things are—the _truly_ scary ones—are what you can neither avoid nor control, I thought.

"Space jellyfish floating from the ceiling with small points of light in them might work," Val said thoughtfully. "If you stuffed plastic wrap with jelly, then coated it with hand cream or something slimy... I could pass it on."

I shrugged. The paint flew on in neat lines, and again my thoughts removed themselves. He slowly stretched and stood up, resting his wall carefully to dry.

—

"We have time, Xavier," Ms Enn said after the last class of the week. "Come with me. It'll be better for you than to wait.

"You've done quite well," she said absently. Perhaps she was too busy still with the other extra work for her this week. "Balanced out your medications and passing almost for sane."

"I told Gordon what you said," I said. "I told him so he knows I can't be involuntarily confined. Or if you try to do it, he won't believe you, and that could harm you—not that I want to harm you. I don't. He wouldn't want me tied down and drugged. You can have anything you want but that." I tried to slow myself from speaking too quickly, and looked down at my hands instead of into her face.

"Excellent," Ms Enn said, honeyed. "You've come to a powerful realisation of the combination of medication that works for you—and motivation. You can look at me, Xavier. It's all right."

Flame-red hair framed dark blue eyes, a light hazel feather ornamenting the side of her face. Furnace or weaker housefire? There was nobody outside my mother I could trust; nobody that I trusted.

"This is progress," she said. "Everything I do might be for your own good in the end. I'm sorry I've been so busy this week to fit you in earlier. You're even quite neatly dressed today." She twirled a cigarette between her fingers, but didn't light it. "You can be a sensible, clever boy when you want to be, can't you?"

"A rhetorical question?" I said. She let it pass.

"This session, I think it would be good to discuss unreasonable phobias," she said, the cigarette whole between her nails. "Phobias are preventable and vulnerable to panacea."

_Panacea means a universal cure—she's not right about that_. I didn't interrupt.

"Would you prefer to talk about that, or about any deficiencies in the meds you're currently taking?" Ms Enn said, leaning carefully forward.

"Yes. That's fine. Some of the things I don't like are in the reports anyway. The documents you've already seen," I said.

"Mmm, yes," she said. "Have a start, Xavier. Tell me about all your fears."

_I do know the list of things I don't like; and I know ways to cope with each of them already. Speak slowly; don't tell her too much; and know that it is less than a year to be done._

"Crowds of people," I began.

—


	10. Peltrephobia

The four ovens all smelt of hazelnuts and baked dough. Ms Enn moved from sink to sink in the name of supervising the washing up. We'd managed to bake cookies.

_Have I seen many things that weren't real over the past few weeks?_

I would have found the prose style of the recipe insulting, but the results proved it was correct enough. The banal simplicity and the childish typeface felt a realistic touch. I passed down a clean mixing bowl to Jenessa and her dishcloth.

"Hazelnuts are my favourite," I heard Julia say slowly; and Rafe's reply that he liked chocolate. _Not that I needed to know._ Ms Enn sat on a high stool, tapping a heel every so often while she watched us. She glanced at her watch.

"Just in time for the next class. Bring them out."

"Go ahead, kitchen hand," Jenessa said, and flung up the cloth off-aimed to me.

"Well done, Rafe," Ms Enn said, speaking down to him. "You get an A for today. You too, Julia."

"_Cinnamon_," Jenessa mouthed up at me from her lower table, extra ingredients she'd improvised in spite of Ms Enn's raised eyebrow. She hadn't needed the lesson at all; Mrs Jansen, Grandma Jansen, and Uncle Burt Jansen had allegedly all won cooking awards and appeared on shows for it.

"B plus," Ms Enn finished over our trays. I plucked out one of the cookies; it burned the roof of my mouth, untasteable, moderately crumbled. Rafe and Julia exchanged a high-five between them.

"Pack them up," Ms Enn said vaguely. She set us free to head to the next class.

ARE YOU DITCHING THE ASSEMBLY? Jenessa asked. NATURE DAY. THE SLIDES AREN'T BAD, AND THERE'S USUALLY FREE STUFF AFTER. BETTER THAN CLASS.

"What assembly?"

NOTICEBOARDS? LAST WEEK'S THING? CAN'T YOU READ? IT'S MRS CULLEN. SHE WHOM BODHI FAMILIARLY REFERS TO AS "THAT COW MY BROTHER MARRIED."

SHE'S PRETTY BORING, BUT HEY, FREEBIES, Jenessa typed.

Lots of people; chances nobody would notice or care; the way I didn't particularly care for the subject matter, or the family.

_I don't like large crowds; but I can be in them; Ms Enn should know that it does not rule over me._

"If I find a spare seat at the back."

RIGHT, SEE YOU. I'M SITTING WITH SOME FRIENDS. Jenessa wheeled herself on.

This time there was a white projector over the bandstand, a black curtain draped above as a roof below the cloudy sky. Potted plants were lined up in a row, spilling earth on the stage; some of them were tall enough to be potted small trees. Misha's bulk stood out in the far front this time, Erin's fair hair by his side; I could see Val's cornrows too, by them. I didn't need to look for people; I sat safely apart and waited. Everyone talked loudly, but above the sky was an even grey in the clouds. I opened a book.

The microphone shrieked, discordant-crashing-yellow-blue. I put a hand to my ear. Mrs Cullen tapped it three times and then began to speak. Her voice was soft and could have been gentle; but it was only nondescript. The first slide was a picture of trees not unlike those I saw about the town, an interesting shape of an enclosed grove lush with rain and ripe leaves, two branches shaping themselves almost like a watching eye in a lower corner. The Olympic National Park; temperate rainforest; picture of a vast toppled red cedar tree...

People fidgeted over the talk; the plain voice rarely changed its tone. Like a brook, perhaps, or like a flute, if the brook were through a streambed of flawless unchanging geometry and the flute were dull pewter instead of silver. Mrs Cullen's words held together and she moved from one paragraph to the next with some reason for each of the environmental protections she wanted people to keep. As a book it might have been worth one read.

Helen Cullen herself was a still woman, her face light-skinned though not so pale as Bodhi's. Her red-gold hair crowned her, plaited into a thick coronet: she could have seemed glorious, but she looked as if she was a watercolor copy of some vivid painting, or as if thick glass covered her and blurred her away. Her dress was plain beige as her voice, a ribbon-like scarf knotted in a complex pattern at her neck, the same color as blouse and knee-length skirt. I supposed her shoes were a gardener's: flat and practical.

She could pass for somebody's mother, I thought; then I remembered that she had four foster children and a sister-in-law. Bodhi occupied two seats instead of one toward the left of the audience, legs splayed to take up room, talking loudly to those around her. Her other relatives sat below, pink-haired Alora seeming to whisper something to her friend during the speech.

"Continue to be aware. We all have the privilege of the largest temperate rainforest in the world. We must work to keep our balance of nature." Mrs Cullen lowered her microphone and waited patiently for vague applause.

"...and we...we t-thank you for the new p-plants, and all your s-support of Forks High School N-nursery over the years..." Erin stuttered through a planned speech, looking down at her feet, light reflecting off her braces. Ms Harper watched approvingly by the wings.

_That wasn't bad_, I thought, and made sure to be among the first to leave.

—

We'd had to present Ms Harper with a summary of Helen Cullen's speech in payment for missing class; then the blood-typing lab. I'd imitated Gordon's signature on the form out of habit of filling forms for my mother. Erin, looking pale and as if resigned to some horror, set out the applicator and microlancet.

"I s-still..." she whispered. "I've done it before and given blood, but you can be a l-little nervous..."

"Funny, it involves a single pinprick," I said.

"And I've d-done the pig's heart dissection, and f-frog lungs...it's not so bad." Erin smiled weakly below the curtain of her hair.

"Fix your hair back in pracs, Erin, it's unsafe and unhygienic to wear it that way," Ms Harper said, sweeping around the room, stepping in front of one station after the next. "One droplet of tap water per test panel. Who can tell me why we wouldn't use a saline solution? Thank you, Erin, that's correct. Next, you'll be taking a drop of blood from either your finger or earlobe. Use the gauze pad first to sterilise your skin. Touch the blood drop on all four prongs of the applicator; then scrape across the indicator... Bodhi, I'm well aware of your doctor's note; you're free to leave this class." She paused over Bodhi and Val's table.

"I'm a big tough girl, Mizz Harper. I do my own spiked heels up and everything. Nothing I can't handle watching." Bodhi glared black-eyed around the room, folding her arms. She'd been not-so-very driven out of Ms Harper's class for the last three lessons or so.

"Be that as it may," Ms Harper said coldly. "After you've used the applicator, carefully expose all four pins to the indicator squares. Then answer your blood type and fill out the punnet squares..."

Erin brushed down her forefinger with the alcohol-scented gauze and determinedly raised the lancet. I reached for my own materials to do the same. I could remember how blood ought to look below a microscope, rounded red blood cells floating in plasma, white blood cells larger and more grainy and few among them. Blood type was measured on the surface of red blood cells; depicted as carbohydrates surrounding the cell in a protective ring, with antibodies in the plasma fending away the opposite type. A square of the regular patterns where it all made sense. I skewered my own finger and let the prongs drip red.

There was a high shriek and the clatter of an overturned chair. I couldn't help but look up to see Bodhi Cullen rolling on the ground, groaning melodramatically.

"I was wrong, Mizz Harper, I was wrong! God, I think I'm going to faint—nurse's office—"

_So she dislikes blood_? Val's hand was paused on his applicator beside her. _Some people do_.

"Erin, take her to the office," Ms Harper ordered. "Everyone else well enough? Eyes on your work. Don't stare at her." Erin rushed over and knelt by Bodhi, whispering to herself. She spoke so swiftly that the stutter disappeared.

"Fainting—the course said to lie with your legs high and your head below heart level, check if airways are clear—it'll be all right, Bodhi, you'll feel better soon—loosen any tight clothing—"

"And you'd like that way too much, wouldn't you, Craterface?" Bodhi shouted at her. "Stupid birdbrain emptyheaded bimbo, the hair color's really accurate, isn't it? It's called a fucking vasovagal response, you dumb blonde, fucking take me to the office just like your dear precious Mizz Harper says—"

"Erin, help her out," Ms Harper said. "Concentrate, class. No comments, finish the lab..."

"You'll be all right," Erin repeated, placing Bodhi's arm over her shoulders. "And...and I'm pretty sure it's j-just called a vasovagal response..."

_B negative, like Mom._ The blood had stayed bright red in all but the second of the panels.

—

The words for Coach Kagin's driving theory test lined up in my head. _Use lights, use headlights, two arrows and triangle with dotted line indicate added lane..._

He glanced over it, looked suspiciously at my sleeves and the backs of my hands, and dismissed me. Lately I'd been sent to run laps in his class; far easier than the team sports with loud groups.

"No doctor's cert yet? Not behind the wheel, being a head case and all. —ger off."

I was grabbed outside Coach Kagin's shed, though she let go quickly. "You've got spare time, I see," Maggie said. "Now I want the painting cleared off the schedule by the twenty-fourth, since then the real work will have to start if we're to have a hope of finishing in time, your rendezvous time is sixteen hundred and fourteen..."

_This is voluntary; I could refuse her._ I was calm and it was not difficult. And one could not deny the force of Napoleon's personality.

Grey paint covered wood once again.

"Some meltdown she had in Ms Harper's class," Val interrupted. He looked slighly sheepish when I glanced across. "I know, I said I don't talk much. Maybe Maggie told me to be friendly. I've gotta run for football practice soon anyway."

"What's there to talk about? Some people are afraid of blood and many other things," I said.

_People in large groups. Silverfish coming up through dirty drains. Losing yourself. People touching too close._

I'd forgotten about Bodhi's fears until he'd mentioned them.

"With a doctor's note you have to believe her," Val said. "Problem is she tells so many wild stories. If something was really the matter with her, and I hope there won't ever be, it'd be the boy who cried wolf over again. Girl."

"She's boring," I said vaguely, painting a corner, wondering when the daydreams would come. I heard a low, brief laugh.

"You might be the only person in school who can say that," Val said. "Man, she's—they call her the crazy hot chick—but, yeah, I'm glad you're saying that." He straightened up. "It's not nice to follow 'round people who don't like you, you know?"

"I don't follow people. I'd rather—" I said. _Well, I _would_ rather._ "—Stay alone."

Then it went mostly quiet again; Val finished his wall and kept the appointment with the sports team. _If I work at this longer, I'll finish earlier_, I supposed; I stopped when I'd started painting the building's wall next to the false walls. _Walk the hills—take a long detour before returning before it is dark. Read, and write._

—


	11. Anova And The Wolf

It was raining again that early morning.

_It's raining again_, I wrote. I paused; that wasn't right. The graveyard stones met my eyes.

_Things happened. Not important; not to me. There was an attempted bombing, and that's why I had to leave early. It probably won't happen next time I see you._

_A Los Angeles businessman; the Cullen children and the cold Cullen and his pewter-like wife; people I don't know and have never seen. A strange event. Gordon says that a boy called Chase Willow—from the football team, from the reservation—found a black balaclava tossed up by the sea; the one who phoned where they found me. He knows Monty Black._

_If someone felt they couldn't report the bomb properly, without giving themselves away to the authorities..._

_Gordon's work is starting to taper off now, because it was probably someone out of town. I can visit you next weekend. I'm sorry it's taken so long, Mom. I've kept writing to you._

_Local news. If I can get a doctor's certificate, I can drive a car, and I can see you on my own. If there's some way to make Gordon trust me alone to come back—and then there's less than a year._

_Beyond that, there's a second-hand bookstore at the far end of the town square. I have a pile on my bed since I saved food money and walked to find it. I'm alone but for words, like now._

_Not like now._ I stopped. The red-haired girl walked slowly up the path: Imogen Winthrop. For a moment she bent down as if to pick something up. She headed toward one of the graves, and then turned her head to stare. She put her right hand on her waist.

"What're you doing here? Are you the kind of creep who likes to hang around other people's graves and dead people? It's disturbing and practically trespassing and stickybeaking on other people that you don't have a right to be, so get _out_ already. I'm so not in the mood and you just went up another five points on the creepster scale."

"There's a Swan grave here," I said_. _Ilene Swan: _I am the resurrection and the life. She that believeth in me yet shall live._

Imogen folded her arms. "Yeah? Yeah, well, I knew ol' Missis Swan way better than you ever did. Ever remember what she was like? Even remember she was your grandma? Thought not. She had this dorky picture of you on her mantlepiece with this uncool scarf she knitted. I know, because she was one of the best houses to hit up for Hallowe'en with the good brown taffy-pull candy, and I got the story about you from my dad as a kid after I asked too many questions and she started to look sad. But she forgave me for it and from when I was nine I earned a bit of cash weeding her garden for her and playing with her cats. She died from a stroke, in case you were wondering, on the grounds that you don't act like you care enough to ask. Which is also creepy. My dad took me to the funeral. She made ammunition in World War Two, she was married for thirty-nine years, she had a son, she worked as a librarian. Nice lady, you've no idea what she was like."

Grandmothers were supposed to be white-haired, frail, cooking things. I couldn't remember. I'd have wanted to be with my mother choice or no.

"Which of these graves is yours?" I said slowly. Imogen gave a disdainful snort.

"Way to phrase that in totally the most creepy way possible," she said. She tilted her head to her right. "See, all—sorts of reasons why you're creepy. I don't know if you know it but you've got this weird nervous twitch in your face that I don't know if you can control or not, and besides you talk to yourself sometimes. And you're crazy tall." She looked down at me. "You slump when you walk like you want to hide it a bit, but you're really tall. A bit shorter than Misha, but very tall. Y' can't exactly help your height, but it's not like it's _not_ creepy when you're leaning over someone—I can't help being short either. And you wear oversized clothes, I don't think it's to make you look bigger, more like you want to patch 'em and wear them long past their expiry date and grow into them, like you've been poor—and I guess you've missed the point that you're probably nearly done growing, or at least I hope you have—I'd count as really a midget then."

She cocked her head like some alert, beady-eyed sparrow, small and birdlike. I felt dissected by the glance: a student reporter, a detective.

"It's not fair, I'm shorter than almost everyone except Erin and she doesn't count because she's a couple years young," Imogen said. "And Maggie too, but she doesn't let me feel like it. You're wearing newer clothes now, you're not particularly careful of them like you don't care about how you look, I guess your father finally made you do it. And your hair's a bit too wavy for a guy even when it's short, not that it really matters to be manly or not manly. You're kind of tanned—or maybe just brown—like you've spent time outside, though you don't act it. You've practical hands—you've worked with them before. You don't care about sports or what people think about you—like you've got worries that seem bigger than any of that, or like you're one bad day from turning into the next school shooter. No, don't get any ideas!" she snapped out, biting hard on her lower lip. "Don't even think about getting any ideas, that's the last piece of news I'd want to report—and your dad owns a gun too—no ideas, right?

"You act like you don't care about anything—even less me telling you off here," she said. "So I don't feel guilty about unleashing my deductive fury on you. You'd probably rather slip along in some inner delusional dreamworld and think it's better than stepping into the real world, but the real world's where everything comes from in the first place. And you're creepy because you act like there's nothing you wouldn't do—you could go after tearing someone apart with your bare hands. Eat a beehive full of bees. Fling yourself off a cliff with a rubber band around your legs.

"Kinda like the Cullens," Imogen said. "Bodhi especially. They come off like they'd do anything at all if it'd stop them from being bored. You'd just do it because you felt like it one day."

_Bodhi is—sound and fury above a hollow space; I have seen nothing below her amusing swearing and unreasoned temper. A flash of black oil that melts away from me._

"Nothing like them," I said confidently. "And you're taller than Alora Cullen, too."

Imogen's cheeks reddened and she stamped a foot. "Oh, shut it, you. Just shut it." She whirled around and used her left hand to place a pebble on a low gravestone, lining it up in a row of three. Judy Rovner. She paused for a long while, and whispered to herself words that might have been prayers. I turned away and did not look at her.

Imogen stepped back from the grave, her short heels ringing on the path. "Yeah," she said quietly. "That's why you're so creepy and weird. There was our car, and there was the truck ninety-hundred miles per hour, and there was smashed glass all inside and Mom wasn't okay and Diane wasn't okay. But you know that. Told me to die in a car crash for annoying you. Your dad gossiped about that, right? I should've known instead of being freaked out. Silly little Immy." I looked back at her.

She laid down another pebble on a second grave, some distance off the first. I knew a stone angel gave the name Diane Beauregard: the grave nine years old, and the age fifteen.

"I didn't know that," I said. She'd gripped my arm; I couldn't remember what I'd said to her. "Gordon never told that story to me."

"Yeah, right." Imogen pursed her lips. "Depends on if I believe you or not. And I'm a journalist. I'm good with picking out lies. Y' like making things up on the spot that way?"

"You were touching me," I explained in part.

"Overreaction central." Imogen rolled the whites of her eyes theatrically, but spoke in neutral tones. "It's hard to know what it's like to lose your mom if you haven't, so quit pretending already. Jerk."

_I know at least in part_, I thought.

"I kind of thought it was a weird story once," Imogen said carefully, "that Mrs Swan's photos had this kid my age I'd never met from here who'd been taken somewhere nobody knew, and might have been dead and might have been way far overseas. I've got a nose for a story. I'm good at telling them, too. It was Diane's music lesson."

Imogen's words shaped her own story. Fires blazed impersonally inside her: the woods she burned to molten gold were somewhere far away from here, and her brown eyes looked inward. "Mom loved music. Misha's big sister Diane—she was adopted but it never mattered to them—she was tall and smart and beautiful, even more than Ronnie Cullen. Mom taught her violin and dropped her back home every week, and she played games with me in the back the way she always did. Bastard truck driver had too much to drink and did twenty miles over the limit. Smashed up the car, smashed up Mom, Diane—seat missed me—glass shards in my knees and my face. Things the wrong colors. So that's why you're an insensitive creep and how I lost Mom. Don't look at me like that, I'm Imogen the reporter, I always tell the truth even to guys like you. Now I know you don't have any excuses whatsoever.

"And your mom's kinda off herself in the hospital, isn't she?"

"Don't talk about her," I said quickly.

"Okay, fine." Imogen's right hand coiled into a fist, the same as my own. "My dad's good, but it was never the same with the two of us. I visit because he doesn't. He sells booze, tries to keep the place tidy. And it gets really embarrassing when your dad has to give you the period talk—okay, I really shouldn't have said that one, eww, talk about embarrassing. Go away."

"I'm aware of that anatomical difference."

"Don't be such a black hole sucking other people's conversation in," Imogen said, holding her head as high as she could. "You're not the only one who thinks he had it tough. So this is my mom's grave, and this is one of my best friends' sister's grave; touch them and die in a fire."

She paused mid-thread to glance back at the path. A small khaki-colored van had silently parked itself not far from the graveyard—some unreadable company name on its side, painted with branching vines in a darker green around the light lettering. Along the way walked a woman covered by a floppy hat above a flaxen face. Her overalls were dark brown and stained with dirt on knees and thick ungainly gloves, and a large plastic sack hung from her right shoulder.

"Mrs Cullen," Imogen muttered. "Yeah, this's about the time she drops by. Okay, Xavier, be less sloppy than usual?" She raised a hand. "Good morning, Mrs Cullen."

"Good morning, Imogen. Shalom aleichem. Visiting your mother again?" Helen Cullen knelt before some flowing, knotted vines on a gravestone and took out a set of pruning shears.

"Yeah, shalom." Imogen shrugged and pointed. "This is Xavier Swan, Mrs Cullen. I didn't bring him with me on purpose. He's the one who got arrested with your sister-in-law. Does Bodhi say the same things about him at home as school?"

Mrs Cullen looked at me; below her plain wide-brimmed hat I saw her eyes were a pale yellow, a more subdued version of Bodhi's gold. But of course they were only related by marriage. Her face was longer, her coloring a tint of yellow-brown compared to her sister-in-law's paleness, cheekbones higher and nose thinner. "Xavier Swan. I have heard Bodhi mention you. Often in very contradictory terms." She returned a clear gaze to her work.

"—Yeah, she thinks he's a creepy stalker and a mad bomber and the person who chucked her out of Ms Harper's bio class—" Imogen chimed in.

Mrs Cullen was silent for some time to work, but after some time she spoke again. "And are you any of those things, Xavier?" she asked directly.

"—And to be fair, nobody's ever actually seen him stalk Bodhi Cullen, but I guess staying just out of sight of people is, like, in the Creepy Stalker 101 class handbook or whatever—" Imogen continued.

"No. I don't see why—I don't understand what I did to her," I said. Helen Cullen was a pale negative; even her direct questions held a dull edge. She carefully pruned back the vines over a gravestone for a beloved husband and father, but left enough of the plant there to change the plain stone and give some green.

"—And Bodhi likes her wild stories, the teachers might believe her if she spoke it differently or went to them in private, but she says it out in public like she wants to make a scene just for kicks—"

Helen Cullen fixed me for a moment with her pale gold eyes. "I'm afraid you seem harmless enough to me," she said slowly, simply.

"—I mean, she's totally the life of the party, that Bodhi, that is when the stick-lodged-up-butt—sorry Mrs Cullen!—overprotective brother of hers lets her go to parties, so I haven't technically taken her as a reliable journalistic source—"

I shrugged. Mrs Cullen returned to her gentle pruning; she removed enough plants to allow new ones to grow that it was barely possible to notice. She tidied the flowers around the graves, and ran a finger of her glove softly across the ones strongest in fall's changing colors.

"—Suppose maybe she just didn't like his face," Imogen said, "and frankly I can't bring myself to blame her for that—"

"Perhaps you did nothing to Bodhi." Mrs Cullen spoke again, lowering her shears for a moment. "Would you like Jon and I to have a further word with her?"

"—Sure, the likes of Erin and Maggie are all about giving him the benefit of the doubt, but problem is that just isn't so much fun—"

"I don't often think of her," I said. The pen in my hand drew long blue abstract loops across the paper. "It doesn't matter either way."

"—So in conclusion, Xavier Swan's creepy but not always all _that_ creepy, and Bodhi getting started on a theme's really hard to stop until she comes to the next new shiny thing to distract her—" Imogen said.

"As you like," Helen Cullen said. She drew a roll of thick brown string and carefully wound it in loops around a young tree. Her red-gold hair glinted in the sunlight, tightly wrapped into a thick bun at the nape of her neck. "It's good to see young people in places such as this. Walk among the trees where people rest, and where souls become part of the grass and the rain."

"The environment stuff. Sure, yeah," Imogen said.

"This place is gentle." Mrs Cullen patted earth back into place above a green-grown grave, and stood to move to the next part of her job. She smiled prettily below her hat. "I love to come here on my rounds. A place of sorrow, but a place of the peace that passeth understanding."

"I visit my mom every few weeks," Imogen said. "Doesn't have to be for long. Heya, Mom. Bye, Mom. Say hi to Diane for me." Then she looked back to me. "I don't have to tell that story to everyone, you know. I'll even give you a hand to get up if you want, for now." She lowered her bare hand to give me the choice. I reached up, gingerly, and held it only until I stood. "See you, I guess. Try to be reasonable."

I folded the letter into my bag. Dew shone on the grass like jewels, blossoms and fruits clambered between the pillars and tablets; Mrs Cullen's gardening scissors clicked. The woman had a flawless face, serene and fair and light-eyed and hidden. The dirt on her brown overall was the most real thing about her. Imogen was in untidier motion, strands of her red hair tangled at the side of her face, freckles spotting the bridge of her nose, the collar of her shirt slightly off-centred, the toe of one of her black shoes scuffed as she shifted from foot to foot. She turned her back; she always bounced as if she walked on air.

"Mrs Cullen?" she said. "Would you like any help there? I could totally carry some stuff for you—and maybe ask one or two really respectful questions, and cheer you up in general while you work..."

—

_I kind of thought it was a weird story once, that there was this kid my age I'd never met who'd been taken somewhere nobody knew..._

_If my mother turned up at that Seattle courthouse that day when I was four, I _would_ have grown up here._ A cloud of grey dust flew up on the wind to the east between the trees. Each speck could be a world in its own right, deep down until finally there were that which could not be divided: a world, a chance, a choice.

_She'd have been locked up again but only earlier. Perhaps earlier help could have saved her. Perhaps she'd have left on her own then. I wouldn't have been able to be with her—and that's the _last_ thing I'd want. _

_Never seen the long line of dusty red ribbon of road from Phoenix to Meridian; a red-gold bird in flight through a strange imaginary arc, I pictured it back then. Never sat with her all night listening to her read. Never swung high in the air above black hills by that town on the east coast near the ocean. We travelled roads everywhere. Even if some of what she said wasn't true, the colors were brighter._

_Stayed in grey-green and met the people I don't like here earlier. Brown taffy pulls and a woman I never knew who liked libraries. I'd still be crazy—or would I? And if they numbed me I could never have had a self to lose._

_Have I dreamed lately? I have to._

_I grieve for my mother._

The cruiser was gone from Gordon's front lawn as I walked slowly back to the house. The grass was wet, tangled and overgrown with weeds. Or were they plants? I'd not been in one place long enough to learn. The thick leaves of a dandelion bent below my shoes, and I picked up the grey head of the plant. Spare key under the old plant pot at the back.

I found a note on Gordon's table.

_Xavier,_

_How often do I have to remind you to take that phone? Plenty of people carry cell phones. It's hard to get some kids to put theirs down._

_If you're reading this before twelve, give me a call. Otherwise, use the station number. If I'd been able to reach you before, neither of us would have to worry._

I looked at the clock: eleven fifty-five.

_Stay in the house. Don't go wandering, especially not beyond the road. It's more park ranger business than mine, but it's best to stay out of it._

_Just for today. We've a patrol to get through. You've got plenty to read, right? I'm home at five. _Don't_ go out._

He'd used an underline. This was different to his dark's curfew.

_What is it this time? Ranger business, animals, poisonous plants?_

I cut open a can of tuna with a knife; they make few can-openers for those born sinister. Then I looked at the note again and dialled the number.

"Hello?"

"—A couple of animal attacks close to town. I know you've wandered a fair bit—and I know you've always come back without losing your way, that's good—but until we finish patrolling, stay home. All right?"

"Oh." _Not poisonous plants._

"And should I remind you to get your homework done?" the phone crackled.

"Sure." I ended the call. Glancing out of the windows that looked on the green hills and trees, I could see nothing there. The sky was pearly grey again, and must be raining not far from here. There were supposed to be mountain lions and other predators, but I'd never seen one. Perhaps I hadn't gone far enough.

_And what would I do if I met one? Run._

A scream echoed through the open window, loud and a bright yellow.

_Hearing things, or...? I've never been a good Samaritan._ Somewhere down there, between thick trees. The same scream echoed again.

I stepped down the ridge. One of the neighbours was there too, looking for what it was. It sounded a third time, and a human-shaped thing was shadowed in the woods. A girl with leaves in her hair ran out.

"—Well, don't just stand there, get a phone!" the man yelled to me. "Hey there, kid! It's okay. Who's chasing you?"

The girl gestured us back; she panted as if she'd run a long while. "_Run!_" she shrieked out. "Giant wolf—giant wolf—"

"—All right. You need an ambulance?" the neighbour said. The girl forced herself up with us; I must have seen her somewhere at school. Anova Dawn: a basketball player.

"Come _on_!" she shrieked. "Get back to civilisation—safe back to houses! Come on! Where's the freaking road?" The neighbour gave her a hand. I could see nothing in the trees. Anova hurried him along. _Is she seeing things that others don't? Is it true that—_

A tall, and very human, figure walked out of the trees, hair in thin braids and grass stains on his shirt. Anova turned on a dime to stare at him, the whites of her eyes protruding in her face.

"—_Chase_? God, Chase? Get away! Wolf! Big wolf!"

"Chill out, Dawn." He raised his hands. "Nothing's here, man."

"Totally is! Wolf! Big wolf! After me! Chase—" She stumbled forward and started to cling to him. "You're the nature guy! Keep the wolf away! Do something!"

He stood stiffly, as if he did not want her to touch him. "Chill," he repeated. "Mother nature takes care of you. Nothing attacks here...unless you're up to something unnatural." He slowly patted her shoulders. "I was birdwatching when I heard you. You been smoking the mellow moss?"

"Don't be stupid! I'm not crazy, I'm not!" Her fists beat lightly on his shoulders. "Shut up, Chase!"

"I've seen people who looked like wolves to me," I volunteered. "The cold ones who show their teeth. If you try to look sideways it can help, unless you want to go on seeing what other's can't..."

"Oh god, it's Bodhi's creepy stalker. Make him go away, Chase! I might be freaked out enough to hang with you, but I'm not freaked out enough for him—"

The neighbour brought out a blanket for her, which was a gesture that seemed to make little sense. Anova walked up to stand under the eaves of his house, glancing up to the door every few seconds as if she wanted to dash inside and barricade herself there.

"—and my hair's got to look a fright, and my makeup's run, and I lost my bag and my phone and my hand mirror, because it was a giant brown wolf—"

"Mountain lion," Chase suggested. "Could even be a bear."

"But it wasn't!" Her sliding voice tried to tell the truth as she knew it. _I know the feeling._ "It was a wolf and it went for me. You're the one who knows all that freaky Indian shit, Chase, can you make me some wolf repellent or whatever? I can't go in there alone again!"

"We of the Quileute Nation know all there is to know of 'freaky Indian shit'," Chase said flatly. "I suggest tiger urine, squaw. Scares most large animals. Including social animals like wolves, who tend to be warm and friendly within their packs and usually non-aggressive toward humans." He glared at me then, as if he wanted to correct what I'd said before.

"Like totally eww!" Anova pushed him away. "Also not exactly common in America. Plants and mystic herbal shit, come _on_." She stared across to see the car coming up the street: Officer Dosan and a woman in park ranger's uniform stepped out of it, replying to the call the neighbour had made. "Finally! I get _rescued_! Hey, Chase, what place did Captain Anders put you for the next game?"

"Left outside back," he said.

"Well, thanks for the help and all. See you at school." Anova smiled shakily and touched his hand for a moment, then started telling her story once more.

When they asked her what drugs she was on, I wasn't surprised.

—

I tried to dream; I walked through caves covered with brown fur that pulsed like living skin each time I placed a hand on it.

_Walk through caves: a garden of forking paths and an endless labyrinth. The first kind of labyrinth led those who followed it only back to the beginning. Scarlet thread and bull-headed monsters wrongly born and a sword in the centre of the maze._

_Each fork a choice. Nothing can control chance._

_Wolves in the wood where nobody else will believe you. I thought I saw..._

Colors refused to light the path. The air was cold, and nothing had teeth. The dream-logic was sticky and dusty and old. Like falling into a saucepan overflowing with something heavy.

I could remember grey gravestones, but in dreaming they were translucent outlines in the dark. The walls were black and each fork in the path seemed the same. There was no way back: instead of a labyrinth it was a prison. I could see nothing.

_There can't be nothing left._

I walked on into endless black.

—


	12. Misanthrope

A/N: Chapter may warrant a warning for consent issues, although content is still PG-13 rated.

—

The doctor wasn't Jon Cullen: Doctor Charles, an older man with white dandelion-like hair.

_If you looked at and into the details instead of seeing strange shapes clustered..._ Old brown shoes with arch supports built into them. Dusty black trousers, slightly formal. Wallet and keys in his right-hand pocket, a design of a bright cartoon character on the keyring: grandchildren, perhaps. A plain belt and a light brown shirt below his untied white coat, one button sewn on with vivid green thread and not matching the others. No watch nor wedding ring on his hands. Misty-looking blue eyes glancing down at my piece of paper.

"Renew this prescription? I can do that."

"Lower it?" I asked. "Enough is...enough. I don't want—a flattened emotional affect, apathy, mental languor, greyness..."

"You're pretty articulate," he said. "But the purpose of this is to allow you to take what you need, should you need it. I see no reason to alter it. Do you still have those headaches?"

"Not for the last few weeks." The office's walls had been painted a blinding white, but had been allowed to fade to a light grey, neat and clean. Taped posters showed the circulatory system and a human brain diagrammed. The doctor's face was lined on round cheeks and the side of his eyes, slumping downward.

"Good. If that's the truth then we don't need to increase it. You want to stabilise yourself while you're still young."

_I don't like _stability_ as such._

"I'd like to be able to drive."

He rifled through the papers again, taking his time. "The question refers to a lack of consciousness and control. I can't say your condition doesn't involve that. What would you do if you heard voices telling you to drive off the road?"

"Second-guess them."

"What would you do if you started to hallucinate visions that stopped you from seeing the road?"

"Pull over? Whatever I'd do if dust got caught in my eyes," I said.

"Three months ago, I _know_ you weren't fit to drive," he said firmly. Oh, he'd got at all the records. Pawing through that time.

"I was worried about my mother. I came back to myself," I said.

_They took away who I was and it wasn't thanks to them that I returned after time and I won't allow it to happen again._ I tried to control my hands; folded, the fingernails could look like they weren't trying to dig in.

"I was a little unhinged at that time, but it's changed now."

_God, I sound like Bodhi Cullen now. "Gosh, I guess the stress really got to me, huh."_ A normal person might have tried to give a pleasant, confident smile, then.

"It wouldn't be responsible of me," the doctor said. "Not after one session. Getting behind the wheel of a car's very serious and..." He continued in that vein.

"Just to learn how in a course at school?" It had probably taken me too long to think of that. The doctor fiddled with the odd button on his shirt. That changed things for him. Learn under supervision—and make sure to get to know him later, so he'd sign off on the other part.

_Light blue_, I thought I could see the color of his voice. Three-dimensional shape: the heavy outline of him was clear and definite and almost boring.

"I want to know how you're feeling," he said sternly. _I've had enough of _that_ at school._ "Don't hesitate to speak with me. We're in the business of keeping you healthy—and not a danger to the community."

_I could be if I wanted. I don't care about much—_

"Yes? Whatever it takes."

—

It was a colder morning, raining grey; few people by the school. I carried the safe weight of the bookbag.

_English, apparently. I remember the words—though they come slow at the moment. Victorian sanctified gentlewoman—like a shell garden in paths and rows, dead remains taken from wild sea and sand and forced to mark places—only rare does Rossetti allow unfettered imagination and vivid moving scenes—twilight calm and forget it—_

Under the overhang of the roof and then inside it was dry. I glanced up at the clock.

"Hey, loser. Let's keep this little conversation quiet, okay? Just being seen with you is way enough for the popularity meter to plummet deep and wide." Anova Dawn shoved me from behind to get my attention; then raised her hand to smooth back her short dark hair, glossy and straight rather than leaf-tangled, framing a clean light brown face. I'd almost struck back.

_Ignore them and they go away in time._

"Not a word about the little adventure on the weekend, okay? Being seen with dorky Chase is bad enough, having people think you're seeing things is worse even though I know what I saw, and hanging with you's by far the worst of all. It'd be like a betrayal of Bodhi if she even knew. Because she's my friend." Anova extended a forefinger up in the air to emphasize her point. "Okay, crazy stalker? Zip the lips. I'm friends with most of the people who matter in this school and you don't want to piss off everyone here. Not. One. Word. And don't stalk her either."

"You're mistaking me for someone who cares about your popularity meter. Whatever that is."

"So will you?" Anova held herself as physically confident as Maggie or Dosan, or Bodhi for that matter: one of the basketball players by lunchtime. _You'd get beat up by a girl._

"I don't like talking, and still less about you. I don't care what you see or do." An Asian boy moved in beyond the windows; Anova gave a loud sigh.

"It'll have to do, loser. Remember and don't do it, or _die_." There was a strange emphasis on that last for a schoolgirl in a place like Forks, her uptilted eyes glinting—but I'd been in more violent places. If she carried a knife it was more than past time to leave her.

English class was a scribbled essay: re-read and compare and contrast. _One to the other and hold the structure behind the words. Strip the flesh off a skeleton and see how they look next to each other, shape and form instead of color and motion—_ I shook my head. _This I can live with._

Then red nails tapped on a desk.

"You're afraid of people touching you. Does that strike you as _normal_?" Ms Enn took a leisurely drag on her cigarette.

"I understand where you mean to imply." Flyspots still on her walls in the same patterns, a design of red and brown feathers on her ruffled shirt today, new yellow folders by her filing cabinets.

"Specify it, Xavier. It's always good practice for all parties to be absolutely clear about where we're headed."

"I don't mind about it—there are advantages—I just don't want it—very well. No. I mean that."

"How often do you see normal people having human contact as part of a healthy lifestyle?" Ms Enn said.

_Gordon tries to reach out for my shoulder once in a while, but drops his hand in time. Imogen walks around with both hands at equal height, one around Erin's shoulders and the other in the crook of Misha's arm. The sports teams, Val and the others clapping each other on the back in a way they all like. The crowds by Bodhi, of course._

"Don't expect me to notice things that don't matter to me. Please," I added.

"That was a misleading answer. Do you notice?"

"—No?" I said, quietly, but then I knew that had been a tactical error with her. Ms Enn scribbled something down with her pen and paused before she deigned to reply.

"You lied on that one. Too uncertain," she said, and if she was uncertain too I could not see to know. "You know it's a problem."

"Yes." I jumped ahead again. "I don't miss it. That's not a part that needs fixing."

_She asks about my worst fears—but she doesn't know what the worst parts truly were. Carry on about sandpits and spades and striped plastic balls? Nightmares of sitting and waiting forever? Silverfish clustered around bad drains bubbling up?_

"I disagree," Ms Enn said, treacle-thick, and laid down her pen. "Have you heard of aversion therapy? Hold out your arm."

Then the red nails rested on my sleeve, and she didn't stop touching me.

"Never heard of it. I'd rather you didn't. Rather keep the aversions I know I have. Could you stop this?"

_STOP it STOP it STOP it don't ATTACK her wait ELEVEN MONTHS NOW—_

"You need to be used to interacting normally with others." The fingers nailed down my arm, red and not stopping. "Over the weekend your father took you to Doctor Charles. That's good. We collaborate on your health."

Something roared and whispered in my ears: reddened waves crashed on a crowded beach. It was difficult to hear her voice, shouting close and then whispering.

_What arm? That's not my arm. It's not part of me. It's not even under the sleeves. Not my arm and I can't feel the nails tap._

"Stop touching me," I asked.

"You're supposed to be calm under that combination of meds. Can you show me that, or are you going to be tense and hysterical about it?" Ms Enn's lipstick turned into a distorted smile that took half her face to show. That couldn't be real. The arm on smooth black of a desk filled with plastic plush—cool below. But the nails alien to it on top. Not stopping.

"Are you trying to test me?" Parts of the fingers were warm. _Understand things and understand words—this or forget EVERYTHING where anyone could touch and I wouldn't OBJECT_. "I'm rational. I'm not hallucinating. Let go of me." The fingers were hot over my sleeve: then plastic nails on the top of my hand, bare skin.

_Don't WANT I know I don't WANT and she's not really DOING it and I WON'T stop freezing because it COULD be WORSE._

"You should accept this," I heard from the voice. "Even our modern litigious culture sees nothing wrong with a simple hand on an arm." Nails danced across the sleeve. "Perhaps you should be medicated into it."

"I'm listening. I'm asking. Do you want begging or pleading or vowing or entreating or requesting or petitioning or arguing or—" Words escaped my throat. Above the ceiling ought to have been still. Looking closely was to see a million small white worms creating it by their wriggling tails: but it should have been still. One arm, not two. One arm was dead and it didn't matter.

"Acquiescing. Your mother was a prostitute, wasn't she? Answer the first truth that comes to your head."

"Don't say anything about her. Don't blacken her name. Leave her alone. She took care of me, that's all that's important to know by caseworker or court lawyer or anyone. I won't say anything to you—" It spun and I knew I said too much. Crawling fingers would't let up, creeping worms on my skin and I kept asking to stop it—

"Living on the streets with no cash on the run? It's a reasonable assumption. Your mom was a hooker."

_Doesn't matter what she's read and hasn't read, what matters is STOP TOUCHING ME—_

"—On the ninth at two-thirty pm a woman supplying identification withdrew all but sixty-eight dollars from her account at Westenra Banking," I quoted words from the court documents, babbling about everything. "She had an important job before she had to flee, she had money, when I was young I didn't learn it then, but she did. She didn't have to touch people. And I worked for her—not legally, but not what you think—I picked strawberries in spring, not telling where—she was ill then—" Red stained your skin though you tried not to squash and though there were many people few came near too close. She was there.

"Is that why you're afraid of touch? Or some terrible experience of your own?" the voice narrowed down.

"—can't the not say the orion the human circulatory stars black anything only one thing matters only words and fiery flights stop where elselight—" Things were confused and I welcomed rushing tangled words.

"That's enough. It's time," the voice said. Then nothing touched me. I lowered my head in my hands. When I looked up, the woman eyed her watch.

"It seems to make you more forthcoming, if less coherent. You have a problem, and I think you should be fixed." A furnace blackened anyone who stood behind her bars.

"Bathroom." I stood and shoved the chair back.

_—the ARM only the ARM do not want TOUCHING me._

"Off you go. For one class I may be lenient, but not two..." I was not listening to the voice then, but the words sunk in later while I sat in the locked stall. Expected me to do just this perhaps; perhaps in the end all her students were hopelessly predictable like everyone else.

_She could do worse._

_It's about time I started ditching anyway._

_Whatever it takes?_

—


	13. Jansens

Fred the janitor—nametag written on his pocket—threw me out.

_Shouldn't have waited so long. But I was locked alone._

The sun had set; Dosan and her team were still practicing on the field between bloodthirsty yells. I rather hoped Maggie Fenton wasn't looking anywhere.

Forks darkened and drizzled on the road back. After dark was quieter; you might not see them, but they might not see you. Walk quietly and blend under overhanging shadows.

There that avenue of trees clustered together; there the dirt road that broke into the hill that led to the graveyard. It took a little time to fully learn a way both after dark and in light. Graveyards after dark are pearly-white, pale contrast against night; ghosts only come in dreams. Moonlight was enough to sit and scribble half-blindly, but clouds covered the full moon and the rain began to soak through clothing. Rain is clean.

I heard a sound like the distant howl of an animal, and raised my head; nothing followed but the noise of cars on some other road. There may be no giant wolves but there are people who may seem willing to rip you apart.

_I believe what people say. It saves time._

_Bodhi's friend._

There the streetlight with the old graffiti mark, pulsing a flyblown orange above. There the tree with the silver-green leaves, blowing dark grey with a wind tossing it back and forth. A house lit from the inside with the curtains drawn and a shadow bent over a table. A distant shimmer somewhere between the trees, fireflies or mites or rain stirred by the wind. Dark was easy on the eyes.

And the dissonant note of a fiercely lit porchlight at the end of the way, and a bulky figure waiting with folded arms atop it.

"—Where _exactly_ have you been?" he yelled in a jangling discord. I flinched back.

"Nowhere. Anywhere. Somewhere. Nowhere you wouldn't tell me to go. It didn't matter. It doesn't matter." I could have raised my head and bayed at the faint moon clouded over, lean back against a tree on the overgrown front lawn.

"It's a simple rule. Rules exist for a reason. You don't—go—after—dark. I gave a simple explanation. Why didn't you keep curfew?"

The trunk was soaked wet; I could tilt my head and water rolled down my forehead. "Why a curfew, anyway? Do you think I've never been out in the dark before? I'm not afraid of the dark any more. I might be used to no rules or few rules but rules only work if you know the reasons for them. Then you can figure them out on your own. Who knows how people are supposed to work? I don't understand."

"Understand that it's my roof—my rules—it's...taking care," Gordon finished the disjoint sentence, lowering his voice slightly. "Forks isn't a big city—no big city problems. But sometimes animals are found—you ought to remember the weekend. An elk here, a cougar there, the reason for the rangers on lookout. Sometimes there are things that shouldn't be after dark... And what exactly were you doing out late, young man!"

_How...stereotypically parental._

"At school. Reading. Didn't follow the times. There's not much else. What else would I be doing? Trying to walk off somewhere, anywhere?" Edges of darker and lighter cloud joined each other across the sky, black irregular diamonds. Rain slipped down the branches.

"I'm giving you a warning," Gordon's low voice continued. "Not going to ground you this time, or—or whatever I think of that would _work_. Home before dark. Every day. Understand?"

I echoed him.

"Come back inside. You'll catch a cold."

"I'm tired." I dripped water on the floor; stalked upstairs; cleaned hands and face and arm again. Hot water fogged the mirror.

_Cold and—flattened emotional affect. Except give up some parts and find you're dead and all gone._

_Take too little rather than too much._ I ran a comb over my head. _I have an escape._

—

_A choice, a chance—a room full of books._ The grey old man did not lift his head, behind the desk reading his own old books as always, covers well-fashioned and pages yellowing. I didn't trouble to go anywhere; not to gym. _Most won't care. Most don't care._ Easier to read words today.

_For one class I may be lenient, but not two._

_I don't want to obey _anyone_; it was only the two of us and I came to look after her._ I scribbled down another line. _Don't want to. Don't care. Usually she lets it pass in class as long as we're silent. It shouldn't matter._

_The art of the short story is encapsulated narrative with point at the end frequently told through the prism of a close narrator, sometimes very unreliable._

_Not going is probably worse than going for now. Rationally. Almost as if you're not hallucinating. Or almost as if you can still write._

Only three others in the classroom. Ms Enn dropped a comment on tardiness, then handed a worksheet on food preservation and expiry dates. Rafe and Julia talked slowly about it. I sat next to an empty desk; piece by piece worked through no matter how simplistic. _And the three-day expiry time is for a blank. Writing even moderately neat._ The dusty-cased clock on the wall ticked on. One window opened to a day shrinking shorter.

"I've done exactly it." The teacher waited bored on top of her desk, legs crossed. Nails still red; makeup on her face; burning furnace above something unknowable.

"Try not to be late again." She made no sudden movement toward me; I placed the paper carefully by her side. "Or skip. Does terrible things to your grade point average."

_You have power over me; only for a year._ "Yes."

_The gradual isolation of populations gives rise to diversity of species. These processes if sufficiently long give rise to changes of great magnitude. These changes are why a multitude survive_, I read behind the back shelf. Ms Harper's photocopied notes had had a sticky note pinned to them: _This unit is on genetics and evolution. Creationist nonsense_ (crossed out) _religious beliefs are closed for discussion in class hours. You may see me after class._

"What could, like, create anything so awesome as me?" Bodhi had demanded boldly in class last week, while Erin hid behind her hair and noted Miller-Urey and hominid skeletons.

_Gradual isolation causes change and adaptation. Gradual isolation causes changes of great magnitude. Isolation causes survival. _Words reshaped and changed. I helped myself from the shelves because it interested me for the moment.

_You should know this, Xavier. I have to teach you, because I'm your mother. They wanted what I knew. _Part of that might have been the glitch in her brain, but she made sure I had books.

Then I walked quietly home while the light lasted.

_No, driving is freedom; and I can go back to anything that's not gym._ Things changed. Napoleon lectured me for two days' absence without leave or notification, Maggie Fenton paying attention after all; I went back to painting, starting the second coats on the plywood.

"Once upon a —dy time," Coach Kagin said in his car, "there was this prissy limey bloke they called Charles Darwin, and he started the principle of —ing natural selection. Recollections of that cross your mind, mister nerd?"

"The gradual process whereby inherited variations adapted to a given environment tend to survive and reproduce their success in that environment?" Ms Harper would have demanded more than that memory of words. Change makes some live longer.

"Always one —dy smartmouth," Kagin said. "It's the way of the jungle. It's the way of men. (And the way of the girls' soccer team.) Conquer or you die. Pass or fail. Win or send the enemy home humiliated, trampled in the dust, and crying like the pansy babies they are over their maimed limbs and massive loss of life. It's the way we won the war. It's the way we coulda won in 'Nam if the liberal commie —ards hadn't stabbed us in the back and sent us home. It's the way I run my gym. You're headed for failure if you don't show up and get tough, and while I'm not —dy paid to bring out my hankie and shed a tear, the —ing school lawyer says I have to give a warning. This one's it.

"But it's got nothing to do with being paid to teach you to drive, and I'm not wasting time and money. This is the bit where you turn into —ing second gear."

Ms Harper gave out a detention over lunch; Mr Al Hira tentatively asked how I was; the others mercifully had not noticed. _Most don't. This is an odd town_.

_I swear I'll see you again, Mom_, I managed to write below a hill just before sunset. Nothing but trees in all directions and a rare moment of sun. I sat below a branch filled with spiraling needle-shaped leaves._ Gordon's not keeping me away on purpose—at least there's no evidence of that. I hear some animal moving in the distance and birds twittering as if they've just been disturbed. You should feel well. It's been a while since I properly dreamed—I can't find the colors in my sleep. I'm not grey, I don't think I'm grey. I can't lose myself by taking enough that I wouldn't mind _her_ hand on my arm; that would be a death nobody would call suicide. Sometimes I can stay with one chain of thought for longer when I'm writing something for school instead of switching one to the other and the next._

_Loss of an edge, a piece, a sharp corner blunted—rub away enough and there's no more drawing. You'd understand._

_I don't know what to do. I don't intend to sound melancholy. I'll read with you. That's all I have time for now._ Spots of dark paint stained the folded page.

I all but stumbled over the body of a deer.

She'd been a large doe, spotted, her fur the color of a penny. She was cold. I hadn't seen the body coming this way; I hadn't come quite this way, around a different turn. A few dry leaves fluttered over the body. The skin was pale below the fur; the smell wasn't strong. I could see a deep narrow cut on the throat, smooth as if made by a small knife, a few dried drops of crusted blood around it. No blood on the ground, only in that blackened residue. The deer's dark eyes were open and ants had begun to crawl into them.

_There's supposed to be hunting here. Someone killed her and dragged her here?_ I could see no marks of a trail; but who knew what to look for? Exsanguinated by a slit throat. One imagined mountain lions—or giant wolves for that matter—as messier.

_Animal attacks close to town._

I stood. Wouldn't tell Gordon; he might forbid wandering at all, if something could slit open a deer so neatly. She was alive one moment and dead the next, and nothing could be done about that. The small creatures in the underbrush crawled and buzzed to eat what they needed.

_Apparently I _am_ the kind of creep who doesn't mind hanging around dead deer._ Birdsong sounded distantly.

Dark, but not too dark when I opened the unlocked front door. One could predict a pattern of responses: _how was school fine how was work fine._ He'd try to be cheerful.

"Any plans for the weekend, Xavier?"

"Not if you can't take me."

He sighed. "Next week. There's a murmur and a rattle in the truck I don't much like. Come with me to drop it at the Jansen place. And I've made plans for fishing with Sam. You're coming.

"See much of Monty Black at school?" he followed on.

"In no classes."

"But you're getting along after school with the other...young people. Miss Fenton and so on. Strong community spirit." Gordon looked over his microwaved beans and sausages.

"I don't find the tasks difficult."

"What are the names of the others?" he interrogated. "Tell me you've learned their names."

I recited the list. "They're...not difficult to work beside," I added. Gordon's face relaxed slightly. Val was quiet and Maggie a buzzing bee and Misha left me alone. Let there be bees and honey outside, while I am my own prison—for not all the lines across the English photocopies were stolid and impossible to imagine. I stood and cleaned my empty plate.

Three sharp corner turns in the truck, then in the morning Gordon drove down a long winding trail that seemed to have geography impossible to remember. The sky was a light grey, and the sun still lingered in a morning's light. Asphalt gave way to smooth, tight-packed dirt below the wheels. The truck stopped with a whistle and slight rattle in front of a ramshackle, sprawling building with a wide junkyard just behind it, given a name boldly by a large sign in iridescent colors cheerful enough to give a familiar pain behind my eyes. Cars dominated the yard, all colors and all heights, some mounted higher than others on jacks; and the left side of the house had in front of it a jungle gym, a playset of monkey bars and slides overrun with a thick growth of wild leafy vine.

_Jansen Mechanicals._ I'd last seen a house like this in a book somewhere, a grey-covered library volume of paradoxes with pen-and-ink in black-and-white that drew my eyes: Escher. Overhanging eaves wrapped into parallel angled walls that somehow met in the middle and crossed over again; it looked more outside than inside from one angle, and the other way around to look at the shape of the bulging rooms in it. I followed Gordon out of the truck.

"Nice day, isn't it, Chief? How can Jansen Mechanicals help you today?" I hadn't noticed the man until he'd spoken, straightening up on his porch; he was short and bearded and round like a jellybean, wearing something that looked like a glass loupe strapped to his forehead, dressed in dark blue overalls stained with what seemed to be oil. There was an illegible nametag on his right-hand pocket. Probably the proprietor. He didn't pause long enough for answers.

"They don't make those ol' Chevys like they used to, as I may have said the day you bought this here fine vehicle off of me. It's a tragic tale. It began in '59, when the concept of turbochargers for cars came about due to head engineer Quincy picking up a B-24 Liberation engine cheap from an unfortunate incident with a surge in the local hedgehog population by the fuel injector lines...but that's a story for another time," Jansen said. "Come on in, Swan—introduce your son and have a sitdown for a while. The wife made some tangerine-and-turnip jam just yesterday. You'll want a jar to take home, it's just that darned good. Goes well on muffin, toast, steak roast—the sky's the limit." He raised his voice. "Lissa, darling! Mind if I scrape my feet on the mat and bring Chief Swan and his kid in?"

"—Oh, come in, dear. I need the stove corner unwedged. You can get down the rusks and the glasses."

"Come in, in with you. Why, hasn't it been a mess after the hospital. The wife and I were shocked. Now, back in the day, the biggest excitement would be kids making glass bottle rockets out of soda and antacids and industrial-strength firecrackers. I remember back in '76 with Cousin Jackson Jansen—" _GOD BLESS OUR HAPPY HOME_, I noticed the mat read on its plastic turf: curlicued letters danced between pictures of root vegetables.

It was a house of children inside. Twenty monkeylike loud children, swinging from rafters and driving large toy cars and screaming and shouting at each other. The noise was tremendous. It was a wide room, wide and bulging enough to contain any number of them. _There are more like five or six— _Jenessa sat by the right-hand wall, by her feet a loud toddler stacking brightly colored blocks.

_I have my reasons; I don't like children._

"You're a stranger!" called up a little girl with plaited hair. "With scruffy jeans!" I didn't reply; her father was talking enough. Their father. There was a second who looked exactly like her. "Come and play with us!"

"Hey," Jenessa called, raising her head from either the toddler or her screen. I picked my way over a forest of bricks, battery-operated toys, springs, metal nuts, crayons, and coloring books. Below the debris, though, the blue carpet looked very clean and there were signs of wheeled paths drawn through it. THIS IS THE TRIBE, Jenessa typed out. The toddler spat out a sticky yellow dummy. I moved my feet.

"Where have you been?" I said. Not in class.

KICKING ASS IN QUAKE, she replied. BUSED UP TO THE STATE COMPUTER MEET. GIRL GEEKS UNITED. TOTALLY AWESOME.

"Oh." There was a spare sheet on a coloring book that looked untouched. I took out a pen from my back pocket.

WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THAT? YOU THINK I'M DEAF?

"No," I said aloud. "Writing's different..."

"Would you like a glass of pop?" the woman said. Lissa was the name her husband used outside. The children ran around the large room with walls of soft wood and Jenessa let her brother climb all over her feet, so there was no separation. Mrs Lissa Jansen—bustling, sonsy, clean-dressed, a trim pretty hourglass, matronly. "Jenessa's spoken of you from school. Don't mind the chaos." She glanced at the boy activating a spinning metal tower that made loud noises from its batteries. One of the two little girls was spinning a toy tied to the leg of a table. Another girl tried to climb a rope tied to the ceiling. Across, Gordon and Jan Jansen had sunk into two wing chairs, a beer apiece, still talking. The toddler clapped its—his—hands and tried to say what she'd said.

Jenessa tapped on the edge of her screen. "Thanks," I said. The glass was sparkling clean and the liquid light pink. Mrs Jansen stepped away, brushing down her dress.

OKAY, THAT WAS MY MOM, YOU SAW MY DAD OUTSIDE, JEREMIAH, JENELLA, JEANETTA AND JENEVIEVE THE TWINS, JEDEDIAH THE SMALLEST RUGRAT, Jenessa explained. TWINS'LL PROBABLY WANT JUMP ROPE TURNING, FEEL FREE TO IGNORE.

"Prefer that. I don't like children." There had been children in the foster home.

REALLY? I DO. THEY'RE ALL GOOD KIDS, Jenessa typed.

BUT IF YOU WANT, COME OUT TO THE YARD. MORE SPACE. She talked and gestured down to the toddler and he clung to her knees; then she was off down a corridor. The house was wide-built, few doors and many spaces, ramps and elevator lifts leading to upper rooms. COUSIN BURT AND GREAT-GRANDMA DAGNY LIVE UP THERE, Jenessa explained, UNCLE ADOLF SOMETIMES WHEN HE'S DOWN ON HIS LUCK SELLING EXOTIC WILDLIFE DOOR-TO-DOOR, COUSINS HELGA AND NANNA...

There was a wide airy garage stocked with machinery that looked an odd blend of old iron and new screens like Jenella's equipment, and then the space of the junkyard. The air in Forks always was cleaner than a city. Some of the cars and parts were rusting, others newer, and some places in it looked as if labyrinths had been shaped from bristling copper and steel to make strange tunnels between mounted cars. Over in a bright spot a clean area was fenced off for a vegetable garden.

THE '63 CHEVY, HUH? HOW'S IT GOING? she typed. The toddler marched over to a small sack hanging from a low hook of the outside wall, took it down, and emptied a pile of metal nuts on the ground.

_What?_ I wrote. Jenessa rolled her eyes.

DUH, THE TRUCK. WHAT, YOU DON'T KNOW THAT? 1963 STEPSIDE C-10 PICKUP. CLASSIC VEHICLE. ALMOST SUCKS WE HAD TO LET HER GO. DAD LIKES A CAR WITH PERSONALITY.

_It's...red. And the silhouette would be different to other trucks?_

HAD THE OLD 230-CUBIC-INCH I6—REAL SLOW WITH A LOAD ON, BUT REAL STEADY. GOOD SOLID PANELLING AND THAT AWESOME EGG-CRATE GRILLE. DO YOU KNOW HOW INHERENTLY COOL THAT THING IS?

_I'll take your word for it_, I wrote. The toddler sorted through the metal things with plump hands, piling them separately. _Can I ask about dead deer alone in the woods with no blood and only a narrow deep laceration in their throat?_

UNCLE BURT HUNTS. THAT SOUNDS KINDA WEIRD, Jenessa answered. NO BLOOD AND ONLY ONE MARK? MAYBE SOME DISEASE.

_It looked like there wasn't blood left. It's supposed to darken on the parts closer to the ground, separate after death._

OR YOU MISSED THE BULLET HOLE. HOW MANY DEAD DEER'VE YOU SEEN?

_Admittedly one._

THERE'RE STORIES HERE WEIRD EVEN FOR US JANSENS, Jenessa typed after a pause. BUT SEEING AS YOU'RE NOT EXACTLY AN ADVANCED DEAD DEER FORENSICIST, THEN...

Then the three children in the middle ran outside, shrieking and chasing each other and teasing about skipping-ropes.

"Xavier-the-crazy-one! Do you know any new rhymes?" one of the children said, coming too close. She had a soft smooth face with a nose like her father; one of the twins with long plaits and off-white dresses.

"Come on and turn the rope! Guests always turn the rope for us. And give Jedediah horsey rides," the older sister said. "Miss Susie went to sea, went to sea in a great brown boat! Miss Susie went to see, went to see the Loch Ness moat! How many humps on the monster's back? One, two, three and she gives it a smack."

"Or we could play Wolf Pack." The other twin bounced off the ground. "Jen! Make your friend play wolf pack with us! Twenty-five countdown and then the wolves get to hunt."

Jenessa shrugged. ROPE-SPINNING OR HORSEY RIDES? THE KIDS DON'T BITE. EXCEPT IN WOLF PACK.

"I don't touch. I wasn't very childish even when I was a child. I don't even know how—" I said. The faces were indistinguishable, one taller than the other two; the toddler behind them trying to call out _wolf pack_.

SKIPPING ROPE. WHY NOT? Jenessa's screen read. TIE THE ENDS TO THE WALL AND TURN.

There were rhymes involved.

"Eidolon, eidolon. Take north jumps crescendo on. Crumbled bone in bread that's cold. Orbic jumps in wilting wold. Snake hair teeth that goes to stone. Swollen bees stung nest of crone. Turn to south and get them gone. Eidolon, eidolon." The other boy joined them out. Then from somewhere they ran water balloons to throw. Their older sister watched between reading something on her computer. "Turnip root weight eidolon!"

Water exploded on my back. It was...a mechanised catapult, wound up and aiming at Jenella's directions. (Jenella-the-middle-one.) The next hit Jeremiah in mid-jump.

"Okay, kids!" Jenessa called out. "That's just mean."

_Water never hurt a man_."We've tested the stranger," Jenella said. "Ikkmin du snapp?"

"Snapp mu gesmin." They giggled to each other in incomprehensible language, and ran on their own pursuits with bobbing heads. The toddler swung on Jenessa's chair.

PASSED THE JANSEN TEST, Jenessa spelt out.

_Surely they must be done in there_, I wrote back.

NOT TOO LIKELY. MY DAD KNOWS HOW TO REALLY GET GOING WHEN HE STARTS.

_All right._ In the lines of the car labyrinth plaits blew in the wind and fell down again.

HEY, YOU KNOW, YOU SHOULD BE MORE CAREFUL WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT YOU.

_They? ...People at school?_ I wrote. _No, the students don't matter._ A tyre swing flew high in the air.

IT COULD. BODHI AND ANOVA AND THAT. HALF THE SCHOOL THINKS YOU'RE A FREAKY STALKER. NOT ALL GOSSIP'S VERBAL, YOU KNOW.

_They'll get bored._ This line was boring. I leaned against the sun-warmed wall. The curly-haired child played—no, investigated. He played with objects in order, testing as if he knew about hypotheses.

FORKS CAN BE A WEIRD SCHOOL SOMETIMES. SOME OF IT'S DOSAN'S FAULT. I read the words of the anecdote because they were there. THERE WAS THIS SENIOR LAST YEAR, LUCY. PRETTY NICE, LIKED SEWING CLASS. AND THIS GUY CALLED JAKE ON THE FOOTBALL TEAM.

THEY WENT TO A PARTY AND HE PUT SOMETHING IN HER DRINK. I WASN'T THERE, BUT RUMOUR MILL SAYS FORENSIC EVIDENCE WAS PRETTY CONVINCING. DOSAN NOTICED AND GOT BRONWYN AND MAGGIE TO MAKE SURE LU WAS OKAY UPSTAIRS.

THEN THE REST OF THE GIRLS' SOCCER TEAM TOOK CARE OF JAKE. I THOUGHT THAT BEATDOWN WAS PRETTY AWESOME, ACTUALLY. SO DID ANDERS.

_Sure. You don't feed people anything against their will_, I wrote back.

THERE'S A MORAL TO THE STORY, IDIOT. DOSAN CAN'T STAND BODHI OR ANOVA, BUT SHE REALLY CAN'T STAND MEN WHO'RE CREEPY AROUND GIRLS. I COULD BE WRONG ABOUT YOU NOT BEING GUILTY, BUT THEY'D POUND YOU SIX FEET UNDER, STRINGBEAN, Jenessa explained.

WHAT CAN I SAY? SOCIALLY INEPT HEAD CASES DON'T DO WELL ANYWHERE.

_I've seen plenty of schools, plenty of places_, I scribbled out._ There are things that worry me far more than anything some bully can do._ It was entirely the truth.

DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU. Jenessa switched topics. SO ON THE WAY TO THE GEEKFEST, THE BUS BROKE DOWN HALFWAY TO OLYMPIA DUE TO ROADKILL. BUT NOT ANY KIND OF ORDINARY ROADKILL. THE STORY BEGINS WITH A ZOO...

"That's the Jansens for you," Gordon muttered, shellshocked, turning the ignition key. The truck started with a soft purr. "He took fifteen minutes to tighten some caps and pour...JansenFuelMix 3912...to smooth the tank. Four hours talking."

"Hereditary," I said. You could feel the engine's vibration through the part below the door main. The same winding road curved again away.

"You didn't tell me you'd made friends with his kid," Gordon said.

"We don't talk. That's not the same," I said, rather too quickly. "Writing is easier. Different. Or..." Talking long to other people couldn't be done, before. Communicating and neither of you seeming to dislike it might have a meaning. "Maybe?"

"Jansen's an old friend. Good man," Gordon said. He looked thoughtfully at the jam jar balanced on the dashboard.

_Interesting realization._ Rain lapped in clear blue-tinged drops down the truck's window.

—

A/N: Bees and honey outside - Rossetti; Wolf Pack - Hyperbole and a Half is a very fun comic.


	14. Gore-Encrusted Locks

_I'm changing. That's not much of a surprise—everything does that. Atoms. Cells. Stars._

_'Crossing over', like the universe is all a great game of hopscotch. Something new comes. A smudged step on the chalk. Colorful dust blown up in the air. Humans aren't stone cold and constant—they're always changing and replacing and regrowing themselves, like a bubbling chemical cauldron. You taught me that._

_I've never played hopscotch._

I wrote not far from the graveyard; leaning against a reddish cedar with a tall crown.

_When you're on the outside you see shapeless people as if you're watching fleshy goldfish swim through a thick glass jar. You won't see them again, so telling the difference between them doesn't matter. Milky Fanny Price was more real to me, the books you wanted me to read._

_And from the outside you see so many things that are stupid and useless; or you want to tell yourself that. Beating your chest to prove you're right is stupid and pointless. Kicking a plastic ball is stupid and pointless. Going into oblivion for a few hours is stupid and pointless. Rituals are stupid and pointless. Fitting a dead squid on the end of a hook and sitting for hours with it hanging in the water is pointless._

_It's quiet. There's soft rising and falling and rocking on waves. Water's gentle over the old yellow-grey sand, driftwood-spread. Words might say—the sea like a harper laid hand on the shore like a lyre. Or the endless rippling laughter of the waves while you lie chained to a rock in the middle of the ocean, grey-green echoes licking your ears and swallowing the cries of pain while eagles gnaw out your liver each night. The seat of the darker thoughts. I read for connections._

_Gordon and his friend are quiet, as if they know each other so well there's no need to jabber. They teased that I wouldn't eat the bait this time. If Monty Black is tearing up the town, careening around on his bike—he's young. They laughed as if unworried for him. Fishing's almost like being left to one's own thoughts; tranquil._

_Hello again, Mom. I'll see you. I miss you. I didn't mean to betray you. There are photos of you by the beach in Gordon's rooms that I don't remember; the old days. You wanted to protect me by travelling; you thought he would take you from me and that those others wanted you dead._

_I've felt flatter lately, as if I'm already taking too much. There is a word for endless tranquil peace and it is death._

_I might—or might not—have a friend here._

—

It was easier that week; no red-nailed hand on my arm. I talked quietly, trying not to give too much away—not even trying consciously to bore her, for that she might notice. Ms Enn's class worksheets shifted to cover grocery shopping. (Did she ever mark them? Or simply let them rest? Grades were such a small thing to care about.)

"People, we have twenty-seven days left prior to our Hallowe'en fundraiser," Maggie announced. "We've returned to schedule—we need to improve our advertising and hang flyers all over town—we need to finish full construction of the haunted house. Let's review the design documents, then I've made up color-coded lists of..."

The thick red dye smelt of beetroot and corn syrup; the old metal stretcher was shabby and rusting. Val spattered it in thick spots and clots. The steel creaked ominously as he moved it back and forth.

"Too much? Or not enough?" he said, adjusting one thick clot with his hands.

"In the dark it won't be easy to see," I replied.

"Not with that kind of light." It'd blink in and out at irregular-seeming intervals, faint and then strong; and Misha would be standing there in a corn syrup-stained white coat with saws in his hands.

Almost humorous.

The plywood walls were shaping into a maze—not a labyrinth, separate entry and exit. You could see now that they'd been changed; we'd helped change them. Misshapen, curved, and spiralling up and inwards, woolen domes continuing up to the ceiling. You could see now those angles made it look higher, jagged and confusing.

"Imogen was right," I found myself saying. "The way you look at it—the height and the angles are the illusion—it makes you see it a different way, a high dark dome. Then layers of false cobwebs, glowing faintly, higher ones thinner than lower, as if someone's entered a spire that's bigger on the inside than outside..."

"I see it too." Val glanced up. "Vaseline and plastic wrap in the next room, hanging from the ceiling. Jellyfish."

"...Cold and slimy. Irregular spots glowing in the dark, not everywhere so you wouldn't know where to dodge..." I said.

"That's volunteering." Val let the bloody stretcher go, creaking away; he held up red-stained hands. "Come in, come in—now feel the peeled grape eyeballs."

"Noodle intestines," I said.

"Frozen corn teeth."

"Plum pudding stomach," I remembered.

"And the witch is—" We both knew that game.

"The witch is dead. Really dead."

"I hope you weren't talking about us." Imogen, a drill upraised in her left hand, walked past one of her curved corners, fair-haired Erin behind her. "Think we should stick a victim dummy here? Or save them to dangle from some rafters? There was a real skeleton hanging up in a haunted house once, y'know. And it took years before they noticed."

"We've brought t-the real skeleton," Erin said. "P-plastic, really. But he's accurate." White bones jangled across her shoulders.

"Put him on the swaying door," Imogen said. "Let him rattle—rattling bloody bones."

"Fix one of the lights in his skull?" Val suggested. "Door opens—glowing eyesockets—"

"Hanging up in the dark with a light going on and off would be the same," I said. "Nothing, then him—looking a dull color, too bright a white doesn't seem real—and red liquid still flowing over him, bloody bones though they're long-dead." That wasn't frightening, it wouldn't be real—just vivid. Probably I'd said too much once more.

"As if—as if the bones d-drank someone else's blood while they shook; that would scare some..." Erin added.

Imogen stared. "Creepy," she said. "But kinda reasonable. Yellow-brown food coloring, and one of those string arrangements where you balance tins against each other and it makes things go off every so often. Or we should stick in scary giant wolves," she added, and laughed. She picked up the bucket of blood. "Time to stain those walls before it dries."

"That's cruel," Erin said. "It's n-not fair to laugh at Anova..." She moved a stool, going to hang the skeleton into the next space.

"And there're space aliens in the bushes, superheroes turning into giant spiders, swamp monsters going on dates with Bigfoot, computer viruses escaping the computers into the real world, televisions sucking people inside them, Anova replaced by a pod person—" Imogen reeled off, and launched a large splash of red across the plywood walls. "Must be something in the water."

"There's been the animals," Val said quietly.

"You know folk hunt. Heck, the Cullens skive off school to hunt and hike each time it's sunny," Imogen said. She left a bloody handprint on the wall and made sure drips trailed artistically down from it. "Y' can totally imagine Antony out in the field, can't you? Ohhhhhh, Veronica! This buck I sacrifice in your name! Be impressed by my many manly muscles! And Killigan—run and show your yellow-livered guts, cute little rabbits! There will be blood tonight!" Another swathe of red ran along the walls. "I'm _still_ more interested in nailing the bombing, I got some nice pull quotes from Mrs Cullen. You know, proper reporting. C'mon, Erin, get your hands dirty!"

"I don't know... N-no thanks, Imogen..."

"But just stand there for a moment—you're wearing old clothes and this soaks out just fine—"

Then she flung it. Erin's silhouette appeared in part on the wall as if a victim had been put to death there.

"Old Hallowe'en trad," Imogen said nonchalantly.

"I'll...I'll g-get you back for it—" Then Erin had somehow taken up a brush Val had used, and her aim was rather good. Then only a moment later, all four walls seemed splashed and a good deal of the mixture had covered our clothes. I thought I'd flung some at Val and Imogen: we stood red-handed, liquid trickling down our clothes. A large clot had settled on my shoulder. _Technically, supposed to be edible; therefore clean._ I licked my hand.

"Well, that's the bloodbath of medical horror taken care of! These things always look better when they're more realistic, I think," Imogen said. "Now c'mon, Erin, come get the hanged dummies—" She disappeared with her friend.

It turned out to be Maggie Fenton's footsteps that had sounded behind her, tolling the end of the lunch hour.

—

"You're _not_ really bleeding to death. Pity."

It was Bodhi's voice; it wasn't often we shared a corridor. She moved swiftly on her pointed heels.

"No, it's not real. No reason to be frightened of it," I said, because it had seemed she was.

"Fucking vasovagal response. Not the same thing, asshole. Say you're sorry." A tall blond boy walked by her.

"I'm sorry. Leave me alone?" Orange-streaked eyes and nails today, pale face and neck.

"Your father's too stupid to find out who tried to kill us, they say your mother's crazy locked up somewhere, you're dirty and disgusting and don't belong anywhere out of a retard school. What're you made of, tissue paper?" Bodhi said.

_Yes, she's locked up._ _Maybe I hate you too. But I still think you're irrelevant. Battle of Naissus, history photocopies smudged—where the sources said different things, rebuilding a written sequence out of fragments, more interesting—_

"God, people are so fucking dumb," she said. "What do you think, Leon?"

"Let's see. You're so dumb you'd study for a drug test?" he said to me. "You're dirty enough to lose weight by showering? Your mother's like a screw—round the bend and frequently nailed? The last time I saw a photo of a stare like yours the prisoner was trying out some new belts on an electric chair? Will you come with me, Bodhi?" He'd said it for her sake.

_There was another thing that annoyed me when it was said to me._ "You're frightened," I said to her. "Frightened of something that'll happen anyway that you can't control—or frightened of something you're unable to understand. Blood makes you afraid, you're not brave, I've seen you run away, and you're not as crazy as me. Just frightened. Perhaps of white rotting worms."

"I'm not," she repeated. "Fucking well not—you stupid asshole. I don't frighten—" Her glare brightened; she stepped toward me like that day past by the deserted store, and I wished I'd said nothing.

_But she hates reference to a lack of bravery—as if she's a soldier instead of student._ She came too close. No easy escape route.

"Oh, yeah! I remember. Now you're stealing from Craterface. Erin's a sanctimonious pi-faced cunt if there ever was one." Then she backed away. "Typical fucking maniac. Leon, give me something to work with here."

"I'd say he's dumb as a post, only the post anti-defamation league'd sue?" Leon said. "No point to playing the insult game with the handicapped, is there. Bodhi, you don't need to be around him."

"Oh, sure. I'm ready." She put an arm up around his shoulders for a moment. He was athletic, tall, smooth-featured, not stupid; but no pale brilliant. No different to the others who defended her: I saw him one of a mass, JamieJasonRickLeonAnova blurring fleshy dark pink into each other. She walked away.

But I shouldn't have spoken any word to her at all.

My father had a letter back from the school over missed classes.

"This is the truth, isn't it?" Gordon handed the black print over the table. "Mostly _gym_. Easiest class of the lot. You're tall. You're a man."

"I shave and have a Y chromosome."

He continued. "You should at least make the effort to show up. That's the one thing you have to do. Who can't pass gym?" he asked rhetorically. "There's nothing wrong with you physically, nothing really. Show up and pass the class, or they fail your year. And—" He seemed struck with sudden inspiration. "Your mother would be very disappointed in you. You know she did well for herself in school."

_No, I'm not sure she'd mind either way. She certainly doesn't now._ "It's pointless and slightly painful. I don't learn anything."

"No pain, no gain. Man up." He awkwardly slapped my back, trying to look jolly; it was only briefly. "They'll get used to you once you put some effort in. It's all about teamwork. I was on my school's football team back in the day, and it got me into college. Your mom got in from her classes. Pull yourself together and get out with a diploma. You should want to be successful.

"And trim your hair," he added, irrelevantly. "It's getting longer again. You'll look like— Just try. They'll respect you for trying. Eventually."

"I don't think that I want to." _I really don't. But should I give..._

"I'm going to give the _my house, my rules_ speech," Gordon said. "I can set your curfew earlier. Stay inside the house instead of—wandering without the phone. Call it grounding. I don't expect all As, I expect you to show up and try. Get your attendance record back, and I won't try to punish you. I don't want to do that. Deal?"

I noticed that he didn't try to bargain over seeing Mom. The walls here were wider than her ward; but I'd only be able to write to her by finding some place alone at the school.

_They all hate me and they like it when I'm hit and they put a foot out on purpose or slap me themselves and I hate it— _That would sound too close to paranoia. There are things I care for above school bullies. I could get away with ditching sometimes.

_They all notice too much here. That's the problem. _I gave a sullen nod.

—

A/N: Sea like a harper - Swinburne; liver-eating - Prometheus.


	15. Hallowing

All Hallows' Eve. All Hallows' Even. Hallow, to turn holy what was once unholy. Hallow, fields fallow, burning tallow; long night and souls and flame. One-half was crafts come together, cobwebs and mirrors and strange lights flickering in darkness; the other walking the school halls.

_I don't care that people know of Anova and the wolf. Or about the others. But I should have refused to speak._ Someone scratched illegibly on the locker door and emptied red paint over books I'd kept in there.

_Now _that's_ something I care about. Congratulations, fool._ But there were other copies; I carried most of what was mine in the bookbag. Then someone ripped the fabric open, another altercation when I was alone bar for one other in the corridors. _And that can be fixed. I know what really matters. _Ms Enn tried to ask about phobias and irrational fears.

No interruptions in the visiting-hours with my mother; Gordon didn't come back before the time was done, and she didn't speak. _It's a long book and there's plenty of time._ Ms Harper's class, books I escaped to, painting. Jenessa.

"You told me how to keep away from people. They notice things here. It's different, Mom. I pass notes, I talk to other people more than I used to—but maybe they'll shun me sooner or later. Especially if I keep asking. A thing that needs hallowing." For a moment I rested my hand on my mother's shoulder. She was warm. "There's one room with a bare tree upside down and a ramp that curves the floor. When things change from what they're accustomed to, that's what ordinary people find frightening. But it's all smoke and mirrors." My mother placed one of her hands above the other, staring down at her fingers. "Don't think I don't know what matters." I read to her and she said nothing.

Then back at school we sat at black-topped lab tables, tedious attendance records ticked off.

"C-coccus—cell wall, plasmids, nucleus," Erin sketched from the first slide, speaking under her breath. She raised her head from the microscope and tried to smile. "Do you t-think that's right?" We changed places.

"Yes. This one's bacilli."

"Spirilla," she drew.

"Spirochaetes." A coil of hair—twisted in helixes.

"And the f-factors why they're shaped...the f-filamentous shape is the grandparent," Erin said. "L-living, moving, r-receiving nutrients, s-surviving, reproducing...different shapes." Her handwriting was painfully slow to watch. I'd already scrawled my design and notes.

"Bacteria best shaped for harsh conditions?" I said. "Star shape and extended in long filaments is primitive and can take in a lot through the surface. Like a churro in horizontal bisection. And it'd have to have the right proteins to shape the cell wall into star-branched trees—long ones, add crescentin for the curves—" Picture life far below the depths of the earth, below most normal life: hard barren rock and only a little water to feed from. These things can thrive even there, perhaps even on hard barren rock in outer space. And then the star in filaments unrolled itself as an idea, a way to live where most things couldn't and the words to describe the proteins you'd need coming into my head like alchemical ingredients.

Once upon a time my mother was fascinated by these things and they rewarded her in turn.

"You're..." Erin interrupted. "You're g-going too fast. I can't follow it..." She looked over what I'd done, moving in too close.

"Then don't follow it," I said sharply. "Keep your nose out of my writing. You want a red tick next to your name, maybe a pat on the head too. Go do that and make sure to dot every i with an insipid little heart like it's important. I'm working this out strictly because it interests me."

She flushed red below her hair and her voice lagged even more. "N-no. I meant...I _l-like_ this—I w-want to—"

"Speak without stuttering once in a while?"

"Y-you're one to...to talk!" Like an angry blue-eyed rabbit she raised her head. Then she stabbed the nib of her blue pen down on my book. Her silvery whisper was soft and surprisingly forceful at the same time. "When y-you h-hardly speak except to say something to put people off! But s-sometimes you do forget to! You didn't work out the surface area to volume ratio properly for a s-start—!"

She updated the mathematical figures quickly for her. I'd only done enough to be sure it was better than others; she drew a line under her total, wrote a note in the margin about the exact improvement, and then dug in her bag for a book with the dervish's speed of a strange sudden whirlwind. She laid it out and forcefully pointed to text I'd never read before.

"I knew this one mentioned that. I think—" Erin said. I read through the paragraph. She'd laboriously finished some more neat-written notes. "It w-wouldn't work. The properties are _wrong_...but there are others..."

"That," I said, pointing to the other name; its description whirled together and I knew better than before. She wrote out the calculations and gave a nod.

"S-see?" she said shakily. She retreated from that tempestuous part of her that had interrupted like a roiling storm. "You can't...leave off the steps. Sometimes they're important."

I was reading. "Can I borrow this?"

"S-sometimes you're s-so...maybe there's not always an excuse...it's a library book... Bring it back next class," Erin said. Magisterially, she made further edits.

"Finished already? Interesting work." A red tick went out from Ms Harper's pen; Erin covered her mouth to stop laughing. A comment or two scribbled below, more intriguing possibilities to turn out...

"You might be fast, but I can get there myself too," Erin said, and showed the proof of her own. "You're not s-stopping me."

"You're right," I said. I hadn't thought she wasn't clever. The book was new to me; she'd ornamented it with post-it notes. Despite the hearts above the i's...

"—Extreme environments?" Bodhi boasted, speaking loudly. "Like hang gliding, mountain climbing, abseiling, caving, mine shaft climbing—that's all easy, I've done it all. So what's the big thing about surviving organisms?" A few laughed. "And by organisms, I mean—"

"Bodhi, that's enough." Ms Harper loomed. _Annoying_. The class passed by as usual.

I don't tend to notice what doesn't matter to me.

SO DID YOU DO IT? the words on the screen spelled out in Ms Enn's class, nearing the end of the week. Red and black marks from the Haunted House had been unwashable from my hands.

_You should be more specific_, I wrote.

THE LOCKER THING. MAGNESIUM FLARE? HONEY AND DEAD FLIES AND BLOOD? SOMEONE DOES HAVE IT IN FOR HER.

OKAY, MAYBE SOMETHING THAT ONLY LOOKED LIKE BLOOD, BUT HUMAN BLOOD MAKES FOR A BETTER STORY, Jenessa adumbrated.

_What do those have in common?_ I asked. Fire, sweetness, two signs of death. Honey can be used to preserve what is already dead; magnesium's flame is brilliant though dangerous.

WONDERED IF YOU KNEW, she said. SEEING AS HOW SOMEONE RUINED BODHI CULLEN'S LOCKER. AND ALMOST SET HER FACE ON FIRE. YOU'VE BEEN DOING STUFF WITH FAKE BLOOD LATELY.

_Does she think it was...? That's strange. Or maybe not. Does she run from fire as from blood?_ I wrote.

She wouldn't have spilt red paint over books without writing or drawing some scatological or explicit graffiti—not from what I'd seen of her.

THAT'S NOT SOUNDING VERY INNOCENT.

_Would mosquitoes have been more appropriate symbolism than the Lord of the Flies?_ I replied._ I didn't._

THEN WHO ELSE HATES HER ENOUGH? Jenessa asked. THERE WAS CAUSTIC STUFF ON ONE OF HER BASKETBALLS YESTERDAY TOO.

_It wasn't you, was it?_

NO. SHE'S A JERK, BUT I'D HAVE GONE WITH SOMETHING MORE STEAMPUNK. COOLER. She shrugged. At the front of the classroom Ms Enn talked about table-setting; light from the window limned her red hair with the gold of a halo, a single line of the sun breaking through the clouds like a finger of God. I gave her enough attention.

A white star-petaled flower floated along the ground the next morning. It smelt of pungent garlic; I picked it up. But there across the way she was in the long corridor: pale Bodhi with unwanted bouquet, ripping it to pieces.

Blurred, the large wrap of petals and stems flew toward my head. I stepped out of the way.

"_Motherfucking creep!_" she shrieked. "Who the fuck else, right? I'm fucking allergic! Not that it'd kill me, but talk about disgusting—" Around her feet were scattered wooden shapes—pieces of stick tied together, whether straight-edged chi or Greek cross. People were gathered sympathetically around her; Anova raised a hand glittering with a silver bracelet. "—Some people are complete fucking losers, I mean, you can't teach them anything and you have to put up with them until they go to the military school they belong, like cockroaches, can't get rid of them—"

I had the odd impression she was enjoying herself. Yet women didn't enjoy unwanted attentions.

I raised my hands and shrugged, because it hadn't been so. Then left quietly.

But the voices in the corridors didn't stop through the days before Hallowe'en. The ground sprinklers went off while Bodhi played basketball, the fire extinguishers exploded foam over a group of her and her friends, sharp fragments of a mirror glued over a desk she used in one of the other classrooms. I was never sure how much she minded when I overheard her tantrum over it.

—SOMEONE'S OUT TO GET HER AND SHE SAYS SHE THINKS IT'S YOU— Jenessa said.

_—There are times I don't believe I was anywhere near._

Maggie's schedules grew thicker and blacker in writing. I paused by the doorframe of the shed.

"—Investigative skill? What investigative skill? Searching two years' worth of Los Angeles newspapers is way less investigative reporting than figuring out people just can't be in two places at once, not even him. Come, faithful Snowy, more serious news awaits!" I overheard Imogen's voice.

"But it's important," a second female voice said; most likely the blonde girl from the team. "People should not think that the Council allows that behaviour. It's sexist, and it's wrong."

"We don't," Maggie said crisply. "We are not going to fire a volunteer for being the subject of false rumor. The true miscreant has committed worse than Bodhi's conduct in misplacing blame, and once he or she is brought to the principal's attention this will soon be forgotten."

"It will stop," Chase's slow voice said. "People give up."

"Much as it bothers me that you refuse to be more specific, I hope you're right, Chase," Maggie said. "Now we are six days and twenty-three hours and eight minutes from our deadline and the board in the sixth corridor needs nailing and the paint on the dummy in Room Three retouching and the costume subcommittee is not ready and _schedule—_"

"You just don't want to lose a pair of hands," Val said. "Come on—let's do it."

_I have no obligation to be here. They shouldn't talk about me._ I walked in and noticed Maggie blush brick-red, quiet Erin suddenly jumping up and fiddling with a plastic spider on the wall, Val turning away.

"You'll be mixing paint," Maggie said, brandishing paper. "Here are the instructions—you work well independently, and you seem to like it. Well, we don't have all the time in the world now!"

Imogen drew a brush like a weapon of war, dragging it in the cobalt-grey shade for false gravestones. "It's Bodhi's melodramatics," she said. "She's not framing you—she can't be in two places either—but my reporter's instinct says she's bored and wants the perp to escalate. So she shows she doesn't care by blaming the wrong person. Not that I can't imagine you soaking dead flies or leaving strange white bouquets, I reckon you'd pick strange flowers instead of proper flowers if you wanted to give some away—and the bundle of sticks was awfully like a lot of X's, wasn't it?" She raised an auburn eyebrow. She always did burst with energy over the commonplace concerns of school.

"Don't interrogate me. Let it die."

"So the Los Angeles murder cases are on the right track then? You twitched, you totally twitched," Imogen said. "Did the feds check it out? I've read up on all the crime cases in all the news and there're all these unsolved murders, it's not like Jen's biodad would give her all the details if he did any with concrete boots on—"

"...Why did you choose Los Angeles?" I said.

"Lady called Ms Pike and her nice young son Frank came to our bottleshop, I used feminine wiles, he spilled the beans on where his mom was going next." Imogen flipped her hair. "Was the connection in the bomb parts or did they find some suspicious tourist or the ransom thing or something else? Y' can hint it, wink it, it's not like I'm the one who bites."

"Why are you still talking?" I dribbled a line of black into the mixture.

"—And Erin called me obsessive. Obsessive! Me! I'm like a bloodhound in a deerstalker cap who goes on adventures round the world with a cute little white dog. There's always plenty to do if you're a good reporter, right? I've no idea why they say small towns are so boring. You get the same combinations of people everywhere, y'know? Sometimes there's even crazy stuff going on right under our noses and we don't figure it until too late. Last term I got to uncover totally nefarious behaviour in the local chess tourney..."

"_Imogen!_ Repair needed on spider string in room B3! Swan! There's a high shelf Erin could use a hand on!" Napoleon's orders prompted us to work instead of chat. A yellow painted pumpkin opened a mouth of false, crooked teeth on the wall, black-gapped and growing into doorways a a hand could enter in. Hallow: to pass through a shrine.

—


	16. Werewolves Without A Cause

Night had fallen. Clamorous; crowded; smelling of people and sweat and dropped pink candy. It felt like the whole town was there. Black curtains around a bench and a sign for fortunes told—hot dogs and ice cream for the hospital—controlled fires and things cooking on them—firemen selling drinks—Maggie Fenton dressed as Frankenstein's monster guarding the entrance.

"—Tickets only five dollars—donations for Forks Hospital—come and face your fears!" The facade of it arched black, glinting with slick purple on the underside as if the paint still dripped wet. A yellowing papier-mache oversized skull was a doorknocker; Erin's work.

I hadn't had to do anything here; wouldn't even have gone if not for Gordon. _Keep calm in a crowd_. Two black witch hats bobbing together were Imogen and Erin, pink-wigged and green-faced respectively. Something crashed into my leg as I walked away from a clump of people.

"Gee whiz. You tall beanstalks need to look out below, don't 'cha?" I looked down. There was a ballerina's tutu in pink sequins, sparkling in the light; a pair of translucent pink fairy wings; and two pink pigtails dancing above Alora Cullen's head. Somewhere there was a murder scene in a candyfloss factory. "It's all right! I'm not mad at you," she said. "Eat more wheatgerm to clear out all the bad things inside you, take the time to look at more puffy clouds shaped like kittens and puppies, and exercise to make more endorphins to make you happy instead of startling all the time you walk over people!" She waved a glitter-covered stick. Fairy, probably, rather than dancer. It made her look like a younger child. "Have a happy Hallowe'en! And don't walk into any dark places alone. That's not very wise." Then she raised a hand, and threw silver glitter over the air—

_Any time of costumes can be a little surreal._ The Cullen girl danced away. I could spot her foster-brother Antony in a knight's costume, glinting rather realistically; Veronica in a long wine-red dress, taking his arm like a queen. _Their foster father would have to be here; his hospital, more or less..._ There were plenty of people dressed normally, blending into each other. I wiped my hands on my shirt. Jenessa Jansen sat over there, in a group with others. Gordon walked back.

"Go ahead. It's for a good cause," he said, thumbing back to Maggie. I'd already seen it; people were sentimental; it might be less crowded than outside. Maggie—bolts attached to either side of her neck—smiled benignly as she handed over a pierced paper ticket.

Flickering half lights in darkness amidst plywoods. Giggles and feigned screams echoed across the way. It was crammed, not a small space but heavily occupied. Perhaps the dark could help deceive oneself. Plastic spiders bobbed from the ceiling; in flickering light Misha gestured with a bloodstained white apron over his large form; Bronwyn—a ghost in a bedsheet—offered witch's body parts to touch. A ceiling hung low and thick with cold jelly and strange things glimmering above it.

Someone grabbed me from behind.

"Oh, it's you. Sorry about that." The black-cloaked figure stepped mercifully back. Val's plastic fangs glinted bright above his skin; below the cloak he wore a waistcoat as red as the disguised fire extinguisher just behind him. "Is that glitter?"

"I like the fangs," I said.

"Thanks." The lights flickered and two smaller boys stumbled into the space. "Business calls—and vot brings fresh blud tonight..."

I stumbled past gravestones with rippling papier-mache fingerbones atop them. _Don't walk into any dark places alone._ Impossible to be alone here, and—I looked up at walls that seemed to tower beyond the building's height—I didn't think it was ill-formed. I took the left wall.

There were two large shapes in the way.

"She's not here. Pick some other route, creep." He stepped forward, dark in front of a faint light. I should have known immediately whom he meant. Dark and coming too close.

"Maggie?" _Frankenstein giving tickets._

"Bodhi. She's safe out of here." They were still unrecognizably dark.

"I wouldn't touch her with a septic tank pole." They talked about me anyway. It made no difference. "Was either of you the one with the red paint? Wonderful. Minor inconvenience. There's nothing bad you can do to me. Nothing you can think of that's worse. Whereas I—

"I know how to make a Haunted House truly frightening," I said, dropping my voice. "Seal both doors. There are only two ways in or out, after all. And do you know why Maggie Fenton had six fire extinguishers installed in here last week? Fire risk. What if someone was crazy enough for that, huh? Imagine having to smell smoke and know it's going to strangle you before you know it, all the screams and the thumping on the blocked over doors. You smell anything? I don't think I smell anything. Just imagine if someone was crazy enough to do that, and—want to watch—"

"Don't go anywhere, freak. You're probably lying." The silhouette started forward.

"A lot of funny smells in here," I said; they paid attention whatever they said. I could scare them away. "I can't remember, was it petroleum jelly we used in that sticky room? Goes up like a flash from a long string of crepe paper. I guess you'd have hardly any time left to beat down the one exit if it started."

"We'll be back—"

Then they rushed out the long way to check the exit.

Surprisingly easy what people can think you're crazy enough to do. And lucky they'd taken the longer way. I slipped out the shortcut into the cool night air.

"If someone starts calling fire in a crowded haunted house in the next five minutes, I wouldn't listen," I said to Chase, checking tickets at the exit, and moved around the corner to an isolated spot in the dark school.

It's easier to be away from people. I sat on a set of stairs far enough from the celebrations and looked up at the sky, waiting for the artificial lights to die away from vision. Forks air was clearer than many a city; the stars were bright when no clouds were over the night. A sliver of moon shone in the centre of the sky. I reached back into memory like a still blue pond, skipping stones to reach the right deep pool—some of them I could still join together, or imagine I was. Evening star and morning star, the brightest one on all the maps of the sky. Orion the Hunter: three clear stars, a belt, a hunter's sword, the female warrior drawing back his left shoulder. Couldn't place anything else.

No reason for superstitious dread of the night away from the tumult. I'd walk back to Gordon's house; he should realize it. It was cool and calm. I stood and turned another few corners, empty classroom past empty classroom.

"Evenin'," someone said. I turned from the wall I'd walked along, faint light spreading from one of the football pitch lamps. There were nine of them. I hadn't paid enough attention. "Funny meeting you here."

RickorJamie, LeonorJason, Zach, Kevin. Fists raised. Anova Dawn in the back, carrying a baseball bat of all things.

I raised my hands. The wall was solid against my back. "I wasn't here to cause trouble."

"Lying about arson isn't trouble?" one said.

"Spreading nasty rumours isn't?" Anova added.

"Stalking much?" Jamie finished. "This is just a suggestion." He clenched a fist. "Transfer out of here."

"I said I wasn't here to cause trouble. Not that I wouldn't."

Because it's not what you can do but what they think you're capable of doing.

_Leave my mother alone._

"You're all worthless." They closed in.

_I'm crazy. _I bared my teeth. "Waste of space. Slug on the bottom of a shoe. If you want to live don't you dare come any—"

But they were already there. Then you take initiative and make it big enough that nobody dares to intervene. Unrestrained red mist. It didn't matter who I hurt. I jumped on the nearest one—bit and hit and scratched and couldn't remember a thing when I came back to myself—

I was lying on the ground below a heavy painful weight. The others had come like strange winds. In the dark they were more silhouette shapes. Everything had stopped; strong arms flung Jason off me.

_Mother—?_ I thought, said.

I saw Monty Black's short shape.

"That's it. Run home crying," he called after them; and then there were only four others around me. A girl in a skirt who was short enough that she couldn't possibly go to the school, homemade knuckledusters wrapped around her wrists. A tall boy I recognized as Chase, staying quiet behind her. One of Monty's friends. And Monty himself. "Cry that a middle-schooler helped beat you up!" He stood over me; my vision blurred, but I saw his face was bruised and there was dirt scratched on his black jacket.

_He saved me._

The first words out of his mouth to me were: "You really don't know how to fight, do you, Swan?" Something wet trickled down my chin. I spat out a fragment of skin. I could feel it all start to hurt.

"You saved me," I repeated.

"It wasn't for you. This whole thing's nothing to do with you." He cracked his knuckles. "You go home, Swan. You say none of this ever happened. You fell over and had an accident or something. Or we can make sure accidents happen, my gang and me."

I gathered my legs up, wrapping my arms around them. "I can do that. You saved me. I won't tell anyone."

"Weren't anything personal," Monty said. The girl nodded, and stuck a hand on her waist.

"Or I'll make like Captain Dosan on you. I've seen all her games and she's the _greatest_ at putting men in their place. Now I need to get her autograph tonight."

"Okay, Fane. We're done here," Chase said. He looked down at Monty. "I think you're right." Monty Black only snorted in reply.

"Yeah, typical. Got it?" he asked me. "Might not seem that way now, but their reasons're nothing to do with you. Keep your head down and don't say anything. Especially not to your father," Monty said. "You got a way to get home without him seeing you like you are?"

I struggled to my feet. Nothing was broken; the most pain was in the ribs. My right eye throbbed. "I can walk. I won't tell."

"You're gonna have a huge shiner tomorrow," he said. "Come on, Nat, Chase. Wouldn't want to be caught out." Chase's last nod was—perhaps—apologetic.

_He saved me_, I thought again, keeping in the dark where nobody else could see. _Monty Black came to save me._ There had been four shapes rushing in, punching, kicking, like a whirlwind. Fane had grabbed Leon twice her size and thrown him as if she knew judo. Chase threw punches. Monty's friend Nat was beside him. It was all a series of unknowable flashes. _Bothered to save me. Wanted to save me. For no reason. Perhaps we are old friends after all._ I hadn't been able to read much of an expression in his face in the night. _He helped me. _And despite it all I was elated, and burst into weird laughter to myself. I picked up the spare key and let myself into the dark house as if it were an utterly ordinary night.

I wrote down what I wanted to say first and called Gordon's cell. "Dad? I had a good time there. I'm back at the house. I fell downstairs into a door, I didn't turn off the lights—" The banister and a door edge was close enough; I'd made a catalogue from bruised ribs to fading marks on my neck to the black eye and cut on my lip.

"Be more careful. And didn't I tell you not to run around after dark?" Gordon's voice crackled back.

"Everyone's out after dark tonight. I couldn't stand the crowd any more."

"It doesn't matter. Rules are rules," he said redundantly. I could hear loud conversation in the background. He spoke shortly as if he was trying to mask anger. "Next time, ask me for a lift. This is the second time you've broken curfew. How does laundry duty and cooking meals for the next fortnight sound?"

_Acceptably mundane._ "I could do that." Rewards, punishments—and none of those mattered. I ran two fingers carefully around my eye. Very dirty.

_I can't... It's getting dark._ I went to clean up. An aspirin for physical hurt; nothing needed for now to alter my mind.

Sleep came easily. Night had fallen in the woods. Colors leaked into the grove at long last, vivid and beautiful. There was a tree at the end of the world with roots that ran deep below. It creaked black and green, and in stories a hanged man sacrificed himself to himself for knowledge.

_I learned, I studied, and I want you to learn too, Xavier. Because even if they come after you for finding something out, you can know what's true..._

The colors bloomed in water. It had been a long time. I tried to capture the flow with my hands; I held a sieve, and the water shone audularescent and streaked with pale unnatural green. It always fell away. Then I looked up into the night and saw that the colors came from stars and a wide full blue moon like an open eye. They were impossibly distant, and when they went the water was dark too. The earth crumbled below my feet. Low-pitched laughter echoed.

—


	17. Dracula

Frost covered the ground in intricate white striations; I'd asked to be driven early. Winter was coming. White clouds gathered in front of the just-risen sun. The girls' soccer team was already out on the field. Captain Dosan's hair gleamed dark copper in the early light as she gave her orders; she was nearly as tall and broad as Misha.

"Weakness keeps us ordinary!" she yelled over their pushups. "Strength crushes our foes! Forks High School Girls' Soccer Team, another round of lightning workouts!"

They did something like a kicking practice and then ran across the oval in a seamless line shouting what I couldn't think of as anything other than a war cry. From a signal too fast to follow they suddenly split into individuals racing in different ways. Bronwyn blocked a dark-haired girl, Maggie darted under an arm and kicked to Seung Ji, then they all raced and wove around each other as if from above it would be a choreographed dance. Bronwyn solid and Maggie forceful, Seung Ji zigzagging around them all at lightning speed and standing nearly as tall as Misha, all the team racing and yelling and focused on the plastic ball. I watched Maggie take the right outside end of the hawk's wing-like formation with all her strength—personal and physical.

I didn't watch them too long but turned to wait by the carpark. Monty Black would have to come, sooner or later; he'd chosen to save me. Motorbikes; they'd come riding bikes. They rode up after the people passing through the grounds had already gone in, leaving it deserted again: the four of them, muscled, Monty curly-haired below his helmet. I caught up to them while they swept inside.

"Thought I told you to beat it before." Monty thrust out his chin. He was younger than me; his cheeks and lips were slightly plump, not quite grown-up. "What do you want? If it's nothing, go away."

"It's...not a bad day, is it?" I gabbled. "Frosty. Slightly foggy. When it's blue and grey like walking through a cloud..."

"Oh, shut up," he said. He didn't seem marked or hurt at all, though his friend Nat had a purpling bruise on his cheek that matched the color of some of mine. "Come on, Leb."

"I thought...I didn't have a chance to thank you—" I said.

"Not needed." Monty turned the corner into the school. "Nothing personal meant. So go hang 'round someone else like a lost puppy if you want something to—"

He'd walked into the freshman locker rooms; and then he stopped and stared at what someone had done to a locker in the centre.

"That frigid _bitch_!" he exclaimed. It was a pet's collar and leash, both driven through the plastic door with a large rusty nail; behind them was dark red graffiti of an exaggerated penis. "Can't believe she did this!"

A younger girl in the room started to laugh; he glared at her and she rushed away. His friend Israel seemed to try to hide a slight smile.

"Fucking bitch, I'll show her—" He darted over to the locker and yanked the nail out in a single movement. The locker door came with it.

"Her? Um, is it the same her as I—" The connections seemed to come together in my head. "You think it was Bodhi?"

"Think, nothing!" Monty kicked the objects to the opposite side of the room. "Know! Israel, what're you looking at?"

"Sorry. The collar's just kind of...kinky. Heh." The boy grinned. "Bodhisattva _liiiikes_ you!"

"No, she doesn't! She doesn't like any of us! Because we're the best," Monty said, scowling fiercely. In spite of that he had a small dimple in the centre of his chin. "She stinks like roadkill!" The other boys nodded.

She'd smelled of nothing as far as I remembered, those few times she'd come too close. "I don't think she does..."

"She does." Monty smiled grimly.

"Then why..._you_ did all those things to her, didn't you? And Chase asked you to stop," I said; he'd promised to Maggie. "You saved me from them, though they believed her words."

"Yeah. You weren't meant to be involved in this little shindig, Swan."

A needle had just punctured a balloon, or something losing its breath; I didn't understand. "But treating her like that is wrong. She didn't do anything to you. So following her around and trying to make her eat flies, she—lashes out about it—or you're playing a game with her—"

"It's no game. We're not some bunch of stupid kids." His friends shared his glare.

"Convince me otherwise. Because I don't like playing games either. And I thought we were friends."

"You thought wrong. It's all...you learn to stay away, or else," Monty said. He stepped on a stray piece of paper, headlined with Imogen's name and a notice of a Hallowe'en school newspaper edition. He screwed it up and threw it into the bin, an accurate throw fifteen feet away. He looked back to me as if he was surprised I hadn't left. "Want to hear a scary story that's not making it into any school paper editions?" He leaned against the wall and folded his arms, smiling darkly.

"Yes, Monty. I just love scary stories!" a girl's voice said, and Alora Cullen blinked innocently up at him from the opposite door. She tripped lightly across to us. Like Bodhi, her eyes were a light yellowish brown; she wore less vivid pinks today, a pale ruffled gingham vest above a white childish shirt, the same pigtails as usual. "Go on."

He looked tolerantly down at her. "Fine, fine," Monty said. "This one's slander, they say. Too hot to print. Or possibly libel. But it's an old bit of Quileute lore. Two hundred years old. _Way_ before my time.

"In the beginning we Quileute were made different to other humans. Tougher, faster, sharper, stronger than any outsiders have a right to be."

"And short," Alora giggled at him.

He scowled. "Doesn't mean nothing. Some of us're a bit taller, all of us're tough. Who's telling this story?"

She clasped her hands delicately together. "You are, Monty."

"And there are other outsiders, different to us," Monty said. "Predators. Frozen jerks who prey on ordinary humans. Back in the time of my great-granddad's granddad four of them sought out Quileute territory because they knew we were all stronger than humans, and they wanted to make peace so we wouldn't chew them up and spit them out for breakfast. Metaphorically and all, of course."

Alora nodded enthusiastically.

"The four—" He said a Quileute phrase. "_Cold ones_, roughly, in English. Came begging for a settlement. They don't prey on normal humans, they don't trespass on our territory, and the Quileutes let them stay where they don't have to pretend to be human all the time. Dead-looking skin and real hard teeth and a taste for liquid cuisine. And not much fond of light or fires. Or napalm, not that it was invented yet." Monty smiled slowly. "One fair male and his three brides: one fair with hair like fire, one pale with tarred locks, and the third dark as night. And that description? Exactly like four out of the Cullens. Cullens. Cold ones." His voice sank ominously low. "And the ghost story is that they're exactly the same ones two hundred years on."

He left a pause for that to sink in. "Course, none of the story's got any pink-haired little people in it."

"Thank you for noticing." Alora batted her eyelashes up at him. There were four—the five of us—all standing around her, much taller, and she wasn't afraid; they all seemed to like her. "You tell a good ghost story, Monty! It's very cute."

He tightened his scowl. "We don't do cute."

"Scary, I mean. Very scary. Cute and scary," Alora said, sticking out her tongue. "How are you, Leb, Israel? How about you, Xavier Swan?" She looked up at me. "You know, if I squint it looks like you have a nice pirate eyepatch on instead of a normal black eye. You should consider a pirate eyepatch while it fades. I'm sorry you were hurt, even though I tried."

"Who told you what and how much?" I said shortly.

"That would be telling! Do you know the story of Alice in Wonderland too?" she said. "It's one of my favorites. One day she wakes up and loses her footing and falls down the rabbit hole, and once she does she's in a strange odd world with drinks to make her grow bigger and smaller and she's not sure she wants to leave it even though it hurts her. Monty, you're so awful and naughty, I'm late for my Fashion and Textiles class, and Mrs Fox is showing them how to sew on ruffles today. I hope she doesn't hurt herself with any pins. I don't like it when people get hurt. It doesn't feel very nice, does it, Monty? Thank you for the fun story!"

He sighed and swore under his breath, but you could tell he wasn't truly exasperated.

_Cold ones. Cold ones. Cullens. Dead flies and crosses and garlic._

_But it would be delusional to think that stories are real. I'm trying to prove it wrong. Space aliens in the bushes, superheroes turning into giant spiders, swamp monsters going on dates with Bigfoot. Val in a cloak._

I went to the library. It was the first time I'd asked to check something out, attracting attention; the grey old man at the desk stamped the books' cards.

"You do know I'm not the librarian, don't you?" he said, turning back the pages on his own thick book, bound in old gilt. His protruding bushy eyebrows drew together below his grey tangle of hair. "I take my tea here, but I'm not supposed to do this for you. I'm the principal."

"I did see you at the assemblies," I said. He handled _Carmilla_: it was an older paperback book, the cover a black-and-white sketch of two women, one dark and one fair. The second book was Quileute history.

"And I've seen you lurking in the shelves. If it weren't for you and that Erin girl, I'd have the place all to myself," he complained. "I see you've got one of my old ones. My boyhood collection. I donated them all to the school. Ah, Carmilla—I remember it well. I used to shelve it with my Venus of India, and Fanny Hill...have you seen those?"

"I looked this one up in the cards," I said.

"Take it and read," Principal Thomas said, and abruptly turned back to his book and the thermos beside his right elbow.

There's a girl who's sweet and innocent and tries to be kind in _Carmilla_, and then there's a strange seemingly squeamish girl who's obviously not human. Her weaknesses include anagrams of her own name, and she travels in dreams and seems to be frightened of ghosts. I read it under the table after walking late into English, and in the passageways on the way to the counselor's room. I saw one of Bodhi's friends on the way, bruised yellow and scabbed dark brown—and was ignored in return. _Thanks to Monty, and the others._ I caught myself humming under my breath. Then pushed open Ms Enn's door steadily.

"What happened to your face?" she said, almost without looking up, writing something on a typewritten sheet of paper.

"Fell. Hit a banister in the wrong place." Gordon had seemed to believe that.

"What did you do to provoke them?" She saw uncomfortably far; I answered too quickly out of surprise.

"Many things. Many terrible things, many very bad things. I started it." Ms Enn slowly raised an eyebrow.

"You came off worst, didn't you?" she said, still marking the work. _Because cyborgs_, I read a small phrase upside down, _because the internet has awesome possibilities that aren't just about kicking ass in Quake—_

"Well, yes." I tried to switch the subject away from the parts that Monty wouldn't want told—the names. "I'm no good at it with...people my size. Perhaps I'm not always so dangerous. It'd be easier if people just left me alone. It's a form of apathy I prefer. I'd rather leave. Not leave as in threatening any form of self-harm, of course. What did you want to talk about today?"

She raised her head and paused; it was true I was still afraid of what she could do, and I thought she saw it. It might be better if she saw it.

"Friday night, I guess, from the colour of the bruising," she said calmly. "I heard the Student Council raised nearly four thousand dollars. Was the altercation on school grounds?"

"No." Because that way it would be none of the school's business. Ms Enn marked off another tick on the essay; I thought I saw faint disbelief across the lines of her face.

"I'm sure it's not good for you to physically assault others. Do you agree?" she said.

"Yes. I don't think it'll happen again. In another week it'll be as if it never happened. They—" I remembered she'd said _them_, perhaps meant as an ambiguous singular—"seem to have the same impression."

She noted something down.

"Do you have violent thoughts?" she began.

_Yes. I'm cold inside and I don't care what happens to them. Or you._ "Normal people have those too..."

I tried to fumble answers; this time she didn't seem to be trying to press. Then it was over again for another week—_and the marks do not matter, and the thoughts do not matter, and time is marked off_—and I carried the books to her class. Monty crossed over the same path; I waved, though he didn't return it.

_And in this part there is a reason why I don't hate the class._ Jenessa wheeled in next to me as Ms Enn slapped down another set of worksheets. I caught myself still smiling.

_I like you_, I scribbled out. _I like having conversations with you. I thought I should tell you._

ALREADY KNOW I'M AWESOME, her screen flashed back.

WHERE DID YOU GET THE SHINER? Ms Enn talked in a monotone about setting a table.

_It's complicated_, I wrote back to her. _But I think some of them have stopped now. You use your computer a lot, don't you? The internet and that stuff._

YOU COULD SAY THAT. OR YOU COULD USE WORDS LIKE 'AWESOME HACKING SKILLS' AND 'COLLEGE COMPUTER CLASSES ONLINE', Jenessa typed. I'M THE BEST YOU'LL SEE IN THIS SCHOOL AND MORE.

_Could you look up some things for me?_ I asked._ I want to know about vampires. Signs of them, and where they intersect with Quileute stories and history._

SURE. THAT'LL BE TWENTY BUCKS, Jenessa wrote. We paused.

WHAT? IT'S WORK, she said. YOU DON'T THINK YOU'RE NOT GETTING AN EXPERT?

_I'll give it to you after class._ I'd tucked food money Gordon had given me in the back cover of the trigonometry textbook, for safety. _Thanks._

ALL IN A DAY'S WORK. HEY, WHY?

_Trying to disprove something. Mostly for the sake of my own sanity, but someone else might be in danger if he believes things that aren't true, and he— Is nice. To me._

_I read 'Dracula' once, but 'Carmilla' seems to have a different take_, I wrote._ Did you know 'Bodhi Cullen' anagrams to 'Boiled Lunch'?_

Another sheet of school newspaper spiraled along on the breeze outside. A bird called and a fresh cold wind blew across my face. _Special Hallowe'en edition—Imogen Winthrop—_

_Greetings, fellow prisoners in this box of plaster walls they call school! My fellow students on our educational journey!_

_Keeping up the tradition of scary stories while the shadows rise and fall turns to winter, this is a true Hallowe'en story, or at least truly supported by one-on-one interviews with pillars of our community, and it happened in this very town, on the day of Hallowe'en itself, forty-three years ago to the pretty young co-ed Rhoda Jansen._

_Back in the day when Hallowe'en was more about candy than plastic toys and ingenious trick-or-treat pranks more than dollar store masks, young Rhoda Jansen went out for a walk on October the thirty-first, ready to rake the pumpkin garden on the far side of her family's farm, while her loving mother watched just from the window. She was sixteen years old and a good ordinary girl, whose relatives would describe her as "fresh as a ripe new turnip", "a fine helper around the farm", "a quiet sweet girl with no carryings-on to be had." _

_Rhoda Jansen walked fifty feet toward the pumpkin patch. It had rained the previous night—look up the old Forks weather reports if you don't believe me—and the ground was muddy. Rhoda left fifty feet worth of footprints in her size-fourteen old brown farming boots. Then just as Rhoda walked past a clump of old spruce trees, then it must have happened. Rhoda Jansen's mother, listening from the kitchen window, heard a faint cry off across the field. She thought the cat was loose and looked out across the field. What she saw she'd later describe to the county judge as "autumn mist in the trees, about average for the season, a spot of dust on the wind, the tall old spruces, and nothing else."_

_Mrs Jansen didn't know why she did it, but at the very time she had a sudden feeling of uneasiness and started calling for Rhoda, who'd been out all of five minutes. She didn't receive an answer. She followed her daughter's footsteps, wringing out her apron as she stepped along the tracks. And then she found that they stopped by the trees with no trace of where Rhoda had gone next. The mist had lifted. A step or two from her was a shallow pond, too shallow for any of her children to drown in, and there Rhoda's footprints just stopped._

_Nobody saw Rhoda Jansen ever again._

_They got a pack of the county bloodhounds on the track, but they smelt nothing further than that spot. They dragged both the pond and the mud, but nothing was there. They set a reward for any news of Rhoda, but nothing ever showed. Years later, they interrogated a local outlaw if he'd done the deed, but four witnesses said he was in a bar three townships away at the time._

_You start making footprints in the mud and disappear off into thin air. It could happen to me. It could happen to you. It could happen to any of you._

_Good Hallowe'en story or not? You decide._

_But I heard it from a Jansen, and they ought to know. Happy Hallowe'een, all._

Jenessa, perhaps, or not; half the rollcalls in the school had at least one Jansen, Jansens in the grocery store and Jansens selling sporting goods to tourists and Jansens at the Scandinavian coffeeshop. I read while I walked, and stopped short of colliding into something solid in front of Ms Harper's classroom for not taking care. By Bodhi herself.

"So, yeah, totally—" She flicked off the silver cell phone she'd been speaking into and said nothing more. I looked at her: pale-skinned but not fanged in her mouth by any stretch of the imagination, black lipstick and golden eyes, the same as almost always. I hadn't seen her on that night at the Haunted House, not since the last class. She glared at me and I realized what I was doing, and averted my eyes. She still didn't say anything, as if she understood it was over now. She looked away and spoke to Val as we entered the classroom.

"How's it going, Gratermouth?" she started to Erin. "Picked up any more radio stations on those train tracks over your teeth lately? Popped any of the volcanoes on your face?" Erin lowered her head and stared down at her work.

"Leave her alone, Bodhi." It was Val who broke in. She tossed her head.

"Shut up. Can't you take a joke? You know Craterface likes me, really, when she rescued me from that nasty vasovagal response and everything—so, whiny little Erin, did you have an exciting weekend? Sang to any cute baby birdies like a fucking wannabe Disney princess? Frightened any darling fawns? Drew little hearts and bluebirds and roses all over your bio homework?"

Erin said something softly, but Ms Harper strode in and stopped the talk. I saw Bodhi's friend Jamie walk in; bandaids covered his right ear and he had a slight limp. She turned her conversation to him.

"Are you...are you all right? Were you h-hurt?" Erin twittered to me in a soft whisper, the pens scratching to answer questions.

"Don't ask stupid questions." Ms Harper passed between the desks. Erin bit her lower lip.

"It's n-never stupid to be c-concerned about someone," she said after a while, with a curious stuttering vehemence. "It w-was..._was_ an accident? Wasn't it?"

"Yes. Don't be stupid. I know you're not," I said. I looked back at the diagram and scribbled some more notes.

"It d-doesn't even matter if you do t-think someone is stupid—" Erin dotted one of her careful i's. Ms Harper answered someone's question on the other side of the room. "C-caring is more important..."

"Platitude. Here's your book back. I don't think your second note in the cell chapter got it right."

"Very interesting. T-thank you," Erin said. "I haven't...would you like to talk it over at lunch? Val and I and s-some others usually..."

_It was much easier to push overly nosy people away before. _I let the thick book lie on the table between us. You could hear Bodhi's chair rocking back and forth again, while she'd be sitting in her usual precarious tilted position. "No. Even I can resist your attempts at charity."

—

A/N: Edits made to the timeline.


	18. Anathema

Carmilla was a book written like layers of whitened cloudy glass, milky bubble tangled in milky bubble; the writer didn't think he could be honest about feelings. The eponymous vampire was opaque: a bloodthirsty creature, but there were some people she wanted to slowly court rather than massacre outright, much as she would murder them in the end. Laura was spirited, Carmilla listless; yet it was an act and the monster was the stranger arrived.

Suicides created vampires under certain circumstances, and then only a stake and beheading and reducing them to ashes and throwing the ashes into a stream could destroy them—which would work on anyone. Dracula met his end roughly by the first two options, crumbling to dust from a pair of knives.

_It's something people made up. Hair and nails can look like they grow after death because flesh shrinks away, so people think some corpses are still alive. Suicide is a sin, so they're buried on unholy ground. No wonder the stories come._

The Quileute history was more interesting: real things, grounded in a true place rather than a fantasy of Austria, legends and languages and part of Monty's world. The Quileutes were strong until the settlers signed poor treaties with them; they conquered foreign ships and took slaves from them, riding canoes through the waves. A broad-faced moustached man stood still-eyed beside a whaling boat.

It wasn't surprising that the child-eater Duskiya had kelp hair. She captured children in a basket. She blocked their eyes with gum, but a little girl melted the gum and burned her in her own fire. The original language was complicated and long, compound words that were meant to sound smooth and sweet with no nasal sounds.

Missionaries came and renamed people, a fire by a settler trying to take land destroyed the last Quileute crafted artifacts, the people governed themselves these days. _The settlers gave but wars and graves_, I'd read elsewhere. _People can tell best their own stories._ The author was likely Quileute by the name, the book a decade old. I read through the thunderbird story in the appendix, then turned back to the island: a lookout point in the Second World War. _The history of Akalat stretches eight to nine thousand years and continuously great members of the people were placed there after death._ And during undisturbed death. _The shell midden deposits are the leftover remnants of human habitation and prove that the island's history is long..._

The Quileute people were transformed from wolves into people by a wandering spirit; a collar and leash. Undead were sometimes shapeshifters in stories—Dracula was wolf and bat and mist and dust—but I couldn't fit that into pieces of the puzzle.

_Homework done, for now._ I closed the book. _Monty's strong and even that middle-school girl was strong; Bodhi can push people around when she wants to. But if I were going mad I wouldn't be skeptical about it at all. _I had to talk to Monty again.

"You're lazy, that's the problem," Ms Harper said, keeping me back after her class. Yet she'd given out a high grade on the homework she'd returned, and it was one of the things that mattered so much less. "I've seen your other grades. Students with occasional promise shouldn't waste themselves. Ms Enn's your counselor, isn't she? Has she talked about this to you? Well, she should. You don't do all the work."

"They ask pointless questions." Restating an argument is inelegant unless the image is new. "Understanding a concept is understanding it. That's all I want to do."

"Not if you have any plans after you've finished school," she said, perhaps even more easily intimidating than Maggie Fenton in one of her moods. Her dark brown hair bristled loose from its ponytail again. "What about your SAT scores? You've missed out on our first two standard practice sessions."

"I practiced once. I got about half right." You felt as if the slow-witted writers wanted you to be a performing animal going through motions that they ought to know you knew—I couldn't do that and stopped answering.

_Knowing all the school concepts in the world would not protect you from some things._

"Mr Al Hira thinks you have interesting points to make about the texts you study. But you don't bother to answer the simple questions or participate in math and geography."

"Your questions are more interesting to answer," I explained half-heartedly again. Her whole approach was different to my mother: Mom treated it like a priesthood learning secret arts, perhaps starting it for a game to make me want to read her books; Ms Harper bluntly trying to shove down the knowledge to the whole class. Hypothesis, experiment, validate.

"No, we call that being lazy." She handed over another sheaf of papers. "Read the instructions and do this at home. I strongly suggest you decide for yourself what you want to do when you're out of school. You can ask for help, and you can choose to belong in the real world."

Jenessa slipped me two printed sheets of paper the next class, computer typed and printed on slightly stained paper.

CAFFEINE SPILLAGE. SO? she typed.

_Thanks. I appreciate it._

_Vampires_, she'd written. _Creatures of the Night. Castles, Vlad, impalement, Porphyria, cheap horror movies for creatures stuck way behind the times._

_(The film Nosferatu, however, is just old enough to be cool again.)_

_Vampires get approximately nine million search results, so I present the high level summary. Signs of the common vamp vary a lot. Chinese vampires eat spirits. Viking vampires go for flocks of cattle as well as other Vikings. Yara-ma-yha-who Australian vampires snare prey and regurgitate them whole. They all drink blood, or at least eat something that comes from people, they all have some sort of X-Men superpowers, and they all have some kind of vulnerability. They're like the worst predator ever in that their prey are also their chief enemy—vampires, meet vampire slayers._

_They mostly look like people, but they're dead. They're black like a really dead corpse, or pale like a dead white corpse, or all bloody and red. Here's the list of what they don't like—it's a long one._

Jenessa listed a good few that could be mapped on the pranks, and some more esoteric—light and mirrors and garlic, and then silver and arithmomania and dead human blood and Stars of David.

_The Jewish estrie is always female and came about when a sick woman tried to drink from a healthy sleeping woman to live_, she'd written._ The Empusa demons are probably the oldest in western tradition, from ancient Greece. Some myths and a poem you didn't pay me nearly enough to read talk about the Porphyria, the purple-clad. They look like sexy human women from a safe distance and turn into monsters once they've ensnared men into their traps._

_(Beautiful women, badass killers. Chauvinist pigs wrote a lot of this stuff.)_

_Very occasionally the Empusa help people; in one story they're the beautiful protectors of a village. But it always comes with a price. Rakshasa are an old kind of vampire too. They have magic powers of illusion and hang around graveyards. Some really nasty personal habits..._

_Almost every culture's got some lowlife that feeds on dead people and makes more_. _I think vampires nowadays are standins for aristocrats and fat cats—the rich who pretend to be all glamorous and pretty but feed on the poor and suck blood instead of actually contribute to society, so they might as well be dead already. That's why you stake them._

_As for Quileute vampires, there aren't any. Wild goose chase, though ask Chase just in case. All major search engines and five minor ones return 12 total co-occurrences of "vampire" and "Quileute", and they weren't connected to each other. Dassk'iya is the child eater..._

_And in conclusion I now _get_ the theme of the Bodhi pranks_, Jenessa finished off with._ She dresses like a gothic ferret. Insult to ferrets, sorry. Probably gets her rich brother to buy her AB positive for breakfast juice._

I stifled a sudden laugh. _What's that Porphyria poem?_ I wrote. _I think I've read about it. Could you get it on there?_

DONE.

_Slow it down a bit?_ The screen flashed too quickly and brightly to read. I captured the first few lines by pen, but then Ms Enn crossed over to us.

"How's the joke?" she asked.

"Is it funny?" Julia echoed coldly. "Are you laughing at us?" Jenessa shook her head.

"Do your work. Do you want me to move you where you can't disrupt the others, Xavier? Then that's enough off-topic amusement for today." Ms Enn looked coolly down on us.

After school I scribbled out multiple choice after frustrating multiple choice, pasta boiling on the stove.

_Anathema: is _not_ a type of Mediterranean vegetable. But though we or an angel from heaven preach, and it is beside the gospel we have preached to you, it shall be anathema; let him be accursed still was the pitiless anathema Sergeant Troy well deserved..._ The words echoed too easily, pebbles skipping across memories of black scripts, phrases strong enough to live in me. I pressed a hand to my forehead and threw down the pen, glancing across the time. _Finish thirty-four past and resume...whenever or if ever._

This was probably the fun part of pasta: throw a strand at the wall and check if it sticks. It arced through the air and shed a slow wet trail on its way down. Nearly there, my mother would say.

_Hypothesis? Experiment? Validate?_

_Cutting out the ones that work on ordinary people too, if sunlight were a problem she'd never play basketball. Not that Forks has much of that, but it is daylight. People are allowed to claim to be allergic to garlic and she touched it, for crosses she'd never be able to look at two perpendicular lines in a join on the walls, there's running water everywhere in the science labs... And couldn't test by actually following her around and doing things she doesn't want. Because I don't want to._

_Go back to Monty and ask. Talk to him..._ I opened the other book, a cheap paperback with crinkled pages, a re-read of _Tess_. There was more time to read here than other places, than fields in spring or running building gear. The door opened and I startled.

"We need to talk," Gordon said—cold blue. I smelt the boiling water.

"I need to turn this down." Steam hissed. White froth slipped over the edge of the pot.

The door closed loudly. "Never mind the stove! I've had a call from Helen Cullen. What have you _done_, Xavier?"

_And are you any of those things?_ she asked gently.

I faced him, a hand lying between two pages. "What am I supposed to have done?"

"Ellie says you're not integrating. She has five children at the school and they notice. You make girls uncomfortable, intentionally or not—and you weren't hurt by a fall." Gordon took a heavy step closer. "Someone beat you up. You lied, didn't you?"

I changed for a twist of aggression. "You don't trust me?" The steam burned behind me.

"You need to give me reasons to do that." His voice weighed a strong blue. "Look me in the eye. What did you do? What happened? You should have told me."

"I ran away. I didn't want to. I've been trying—I don't even have to go to school, I'm old enough for that, it doesn't matter, you can take me out of it, don't ask anything else. Bodhi says—you can believe I did it all and I won't care about it. Do what you like, believe what you like, listen to the Cullens all you want. No more questions. I don't care." I broke it off; I sounded like a child. I couldn't give names.

"Ran away—of course you did. What did you do to Bodhi? What do you think of her?" The questions came quickly.

"Petty obnoxious inane braggart bad-tempered—" I rushed into it. "School bully. She left Jenessa Jansen hanging in front of the whole school—"

"I know about that."

"—And a bit frightening."

"She's a foot shorter than you!" Gordon's raised voice said incredulously. "Grow up! Ellie can see you're acting out, she knows it's your—issues—" He hesitated over speaking the words.

"Just don't ask me. Take her word for it and go ahead—I suppose she wants the same thing I want—give me a chance to leave her alone." I lowered my hands to my side. The drawer below the stove pressed into my back. "What more is there to say?"

"It's not just Bodhi. You have to learn—you have to treat people right. This can be a crime, it's serious, and I want you to look at me when I'm talking to you—that's better. Helen thinks you shouldn't be in a mainstream school, she's no teacher but she's concerned for her kids. I'm concerned. We try to help you but you owe yourself the chance to put in the effort too—"

"I know. Excuse me. I don't want to set your house on fire." I twisted the stove's dial.

"Look back at me. Can you say honestly you've never made anyone in the school uncomfortable? I thought not. I don't want to have to say it, but I didn't doubt Helen. Go upstairs. I want you to think about it. Don't stand and stare at me like that."

I obeyed him, taking up book and papers. _Read your way out of it. I don't care._ I didn't hear him move until the door closed loudly.

Tess peacefully milked cows and waited for Angel Clare. I wrote in the margins; I dug out homework and concentrated long enough to scribble useless answers.

_It's bad because I don't want to be noticed at all—it's bad because I want to stay alone—it's bad because Anova Dawn carried a baseball bat. Monty..._

—

A/N: The Tess of the d'Urbervilles references came about independently of that awful turgid doorstopper erotica novel currently being amusingly sporked by a number of entertaining people.


	19. Veins Invisibles

_And, last, she sat down by my side_  
_And call'd me. When no voice replied,_  
_She put my arm about her waist,_  
_And made her smooth white shoulder bare,_  
_And all her yellow hair displaced,_  
_And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,_  
_And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,_  
_Murmuring how she loved me—she_  
_Too weak, for all her hunger burning,_  
_To set her struggling passion free_  
_From hunger, raven, swift returning,_  
_And grant me life for ever yearning._ - excerpt from PORPHYRIA'S LOVER, Robert Browning, at least in this universe.

_Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep to-night if you do_. - CARMILLA.

—

_Helen Cullen_. I left the house early; hung up the cell phone when it rang; and used the directory in the general store to look up gardening services as soon as the place opened.

"Mrs Cullen. You called my father about me. I thought you seemed different, that other day. I'm not much good at circumventing a point. I don't think it's asking too much to want to know why."

"Good morning, Xavier," she said, tranquil as if nothing had happened. Her voice was slow and even as always below the crackle of the payphone. "You may not believe me, but I have acted from concern for your well-being. Events have made me believe that Forks High is not the right place for you. Perhaps it will never seem that way to you, but I have your best in mind as well as the children under my care."

"I don't agree. Or understand," I said. _Dead-flies cold-ones golden-eyes eaters delusions—_ "Tell me why."

"There are other schools." Helen spoke as if I'd said nothing. "Some boarding institutes even specialised for helping people like you. You may not know this, but my husband has a financial interest in several such organisations. There are scholarships offered for deserving students; I've heard that in some ways you're not academically untalented. There are other ways..." The smooth bland voice trickled on.

"Why would you want me gone from Forks?" I said. "In some circumstances I wouldn't mind at all—but this is different. Knowing why. Trying to understand wha—who you are."

_Helen Cullen, her hair a red-gold river, trimming plants under sunlight._

"If you want rid of me, your sister-in-law's friends could have achieved that," I said. "Why?"

"No member of my family willed that," Helen said; perhaps a note of sharpness crept into her voice for the time of that sentence. "We don't wish to see anyone harmed. We would rather help you. Perhaps you could help us prevent further harm. Listen to me, and to your father; because we have your interests in mind. Trust me; I have never hurt you..." The pewter voice began to repeat itself, trying to lull with its sounds. I couldn't interject anything she found of meaning, and hung up the phone.

_Did Mrs Cullen just try to bribe me?_

I searched for Monty again at school. He was out by the concrete bins at the back of the gym, kicking a football back and forth with Israel. I called a greeting again.

"You should know—Helen Cullen knows some of it, and she's been passing it around—"

"Oh. Typical," Monty sneered, and spat aside. "Forget Helen. She's nothing but what her husband tells her to be."

"I asked her questions. She was quite vocal in her replies." I didn't lie. "I took you seriously. I researched your stories and the reasons why you harassed Bodhi in the ways you did. But the talk about legends is—unlikely; I think she's a normal human girl. They'd call me mad if I came out with cold ones and sharp teeth. But there's something going on that you need to tell me about, and I think you've played me like a pawn in your weird complicated tantrum-throwing rivalry with her."

"Pawn's a good word." Monty kicked the ball into Israel's hands.

"And I'll ask Chase if you don't want to talk to me." He shook his head with a childish grin, as if he knew that wouldn't work. "Sure, Chase scared Anova on purpose, didn't he? But I could also ask Alora," I said. "She seems different, she seems quite nice."

"Alora's okay, yeah. The others aren't. You'll learn." Monty cracked his knuckles loudly. Israel punched the ball hard against the wall. "Yeah, it sounds like you're really going places figuring us all out. Nice one, genius."

"Should you do that to your hands? It sounds like it hurts," I said.

"What do you know about it? You're a wimp. You called for your mother when we pulled Jamie off you. C'mon, Iz, we'll be late again."

"Better you than me. I've got Ms Harper." Israel flung back the football. They took off in opposite directions—Monty closer to where I was supposed to be. I followed.

"It doesn't bother me that you heard me call for her. I'm glad you came when you did," I told him.

"So you're a complete sissy coward," Monty said; I caught up to walk beside him.

"Very much so. There's no point in trying to escalate. One person invites friends and the other calls for more, one person draws a knife and someone else has worse..."

"And I bet what you know about knife fighting could be written on one side of a dime, Swan."

"You'd be right. Well done, Monty. So I concentrate on running away." We walked past the empty basketball court, scuffed with black lines and littered with sweet wrappers.

"Hey. You lived on the streets, didn't you?" he said. "See a lot of fights?"

"We scammed off women's shelters for a place to stay." Among other things. "It wasn't like that. And even if it was, you'd be better off out of it."

_She protected me._

"Not for us. Did you see me punch out Zach?" Monty gestured into the air, suddenly enthusiastic, dark brown eyes wide like a child's. "We sure showed them. Uh—you won't tell Maggie Fenton it was me, will you? She's—yeah, it was kind of a bad idea." He scuffed a shoe on the ground. "This place is so bloody boring."

"I said I wouldn't. It's safe with me."

"Deal." We reached the classroom block together.

In geography they'd moved on to Floridian agriculture; in gym they sent me running. I opened the Cullen book in the library.

_She writes quite well_. Words with a rhythm stay with you the longest; hers flowed in places.

_The woods breathe secrets each waking moment. The hemlock, the maple, mosses and ferns; all possess memories in roots, seeds and stem. The old spruce has stood for hundreds of years. Imagine the whispers into its bark. Imagine the sights below its branches. Imagine the voice of the wind in its leaves. Even in death the trees must birth new life: watch the colonnade of saplings grow on rising stilts. The old moss-bearded tree falls as a log and decays. Moss and lichens cover it, small animals and insects live in it, and seedlings take root above the old tree. Then the trunk dissolves for good to feed the rich soil, and like children on long legs the saplings rise above the grave. _Yet after that foreword it shifted to plain dry descriptions. _Traditionally the salmonberry, rufus spectabilis, was used by indigenous tribes for pipe stems employing the branches of the plant, or the fruit mixed wet with eulachon grease from fishing activities, or the leaves chewed up and spit out to cure burns..._

I skimmed forward to the illustrations. The glossy photographs were all sunlit and vividly colored; but despite that they were plain as black-and-white drawings in textbooks, meticulously listing the parts of a thing rather than showing its whole. After a time they blurred together. The photographs in her speech had been another's work.

I startled at footsteps behind me. Fair-haired Erin reached for something in the three-nineties; she jumped back the same.

"H-hello. What...w-what are you reading? I remember...I r-remember seeing you in here before..."

_She is shy and she is nervous, and yet out of a sense of misplaced courage she carries on—and knows enough to be wary of me._

_And Erin is foolish enough to be hurt by words spoken by people with no power over her. _I didn't answer.

"Um. D-don't you want to talk?" she said. I replaced Helen Cullen's book and stood over the little girl; she was small-built and fragile.

"It's a library."

"True." Erin stood her ground where she was. A small silver cross on a slim chain rested over her high-collared shirt; her light hair spilled past her shoulders. "Is that...Ellie's book? I own it... It's v-very comprehensive. If you're interested then..."

_So easy to knife her with spoken words. Insipid, sentimental, shallow, naive, worthless, pathetic. Because to try to be sweet, and kind, and sensitive, and attempt to see the best in all—is a way to bring down the monster on your head._

"No," I said; I ought to want to hide from her. "Erin, what have you told them all? That I'm mean to you, I'm dangerous, I _do_ bite."

She cringed back another step. "I d-don't...I _t-try_... Sometimes it's not easy, sometimes I'm afraid of things that aren't very frightening, not really. I wish I understood..."

I tried to step past her. But then Imogen came running into the library, inevitable notebook and pen in her hands, her short jacket flying behind her and her knight necklace off-centred. "Erin, know you're in here! C'mon, Erin, you gotta poke your nose out and come see this! Yeah—you too, X-guy—it's like cafeteria custard _mayhem_ out there—" Something yellow-white dripped from her shirt sleeve. "You won't _believe_ what she did—and come on, _this_ is what the real Bodhi's like—"

_The _real_ normal human girl?_

It was the remains of a food fight, coating the ground like a white swamp. Tables and benches were overturned, footmarks trampled the liquid over the floor, the metal bins and what I could see of the kitchen behind had been scattered and dented, people stood against the walls with obvious stains on their clothing, and Ms Harper tried to control them all.

_I've never seen so much custard in one place before._

"This is not amusing! Calm down! Who started this? Line up now!"

"It was all my fault, Ms Harper." Bodhi raised a hand. One of the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling creaked with the stuff and dripped a small shower down, just behind Ms Harper while she turned to attend. "I heard the cafeteria had like fifty-three spare packets of the stuff and it gave me ideas. I'm a bad girl. A very bad girl." She dripped on the ground: I hadn't recognized her at a first glance. She looked much the worse for wear; her foster relative Antony was trying to wrap his clean jacket around Veronica Stuart. "Haven't you ever wondered what fifty-three tubs of custard in one place would _look_ like? Everyone's gotta dream!" She laughed, pumping a yellow-stained hand in the air, and nearly everyone shared the sense of humor. "So I accept whatever the penalty turns out to be..."

"You obviously broke into the cafeteria, you vandalised school property, you prepared—" Ms Harper set a hand on a plastic water gun; custard dripped from the opening. Several others were littered over the ground. "Miss Cullen, you're in plenty of trouble, and—" She turned on Imogen. Erin had placed one hand against her mouth and giggled despite herself. "_Imogen_, I see the evidence! Get over there with the others! You other two, stop stickybeaking and _get to class_!"

Bodhi looked toward us. "Or maybe I started acting out because my sister-in-law is such a fucking _cow_..." she said, yellowish eyes raking where Erin and I stood. She didn't speak directly to me; she'd stopped doing that. "—Or because my brother's a jerk, or because it's full moon this month, or because I woke up and felt like it! Yes, Ms Harper, a custard fight is very bad and I promise never to throw custard again."

Relentlessly childish; trivial; incongruous.

"Why are you wearing a cross?" I asked as Erin and I ducked out.

She took the opportunity to witness about Jesus Christ.

—

_Don't have to be here, don't have to do this; but what alternatives?_ I handed incomplete answers to Ms Harper and listened to her rebuke. People left me alone. I walked past the front of the science classrooms and the four motorbikes were already gone from their spaces at the end of the day.

The days were growing shorter. It wasn't a quick walk; I carried two cheap tomatoes in a paper bag from the general store, near to expiry. In the graveyard it was quiet as usual, darkening to leave little time. I could remember a pen in my hands, paper above my knees, a pine needle hanging low on a branch above, greying light while clouds concealed a falling sun. There were no shadows of people nearby. Then the pain shot through my head.

_You're afraid now, you're very afraid._

_I'm on my hands and knees and my right hand is in something wet and rough. I'm somewhere else oh help me help me now—_

"I seem to be having an episode—and then another voice starts to speak out of my mouth—"

Locked in prison for good. Bars and a small grey room and hot musty stale air and a plastic sheet, and a panopticon above, and people looking at me naked and watching everything I do.

A mask strapping my face together, hollow and sane and everything they want to see, and with too much pumped in the mask becomes real and strangles me from the inside.

There were nine of them with raised fists and a baseball bat and I'm not stupid to know they'd harm me.

Red nails. Stop touching me.

Open a door. My mother can't wake up. Need you. Miss you. Betrayed you. Forgive me.

A young rounded face looking innocently up. A child.

Crowded, jostling, cockroaches, crying, waiting.

Stop touching me. Stop touching me.

It's cold. I'm gnawing on the inside. There's a large building by the white street lamp and I don't know if she'll come back for me. It's too dark.

It's dirty.

It's inside my head.

I woke and saw my hands on the tree in Gordon's yard. Bark and dirt blackened the ends of my fingers. Violent scratches marked the gnarled trunk all around its circumference. My fingernails hurt me; my left forefinger bled and a ripped nail hung down. The pain and the rough touch of dirt and bark made it real. I sweated as if I'd sprinted some distance, or it could have been the frenetic attack. Strips of bark like shreds of skin were caught on my face, over me. Small branches lay broken by my feet. The scratches went deep over the tree. It could have been something that wasn't bark.

I hadn't been caught. The house was empty. I picked up the bookbag; it had fallen to the ground, the strap torn again and everything spilled. The pen was gone. I'd sprinted from the graveyard as if something had risen up from the ground; but there were so many worse fears than that. In the scratches trails of lighter wood welled up like wounds. I had to clean my hands. It was cold. Make sure that Gordon never found this out.

Monsters are not like the stories.

—

A/N: Chapter title from Sylvia Plath.


	20. Alleviate

I was trapped; _not as bad as it could be if she knew of the night before_. She'd had me taken out of class. I'd tried to take the medications; I could still think. The world was plain but my own voice was in my head. I'd walked to the quiet graves in the early morning, and no sign was there but the remains of rain-soaked paper, squashed fruit, and teeming ants...

She'd heard from Gordon. "Don't think you're not in trouble, Xavier. Very bad behavior. Tell me all about it," Ms Enn said.

"Erin. I suppose I'm not very good at relating to Erin," I said, and she accepted the diversion. Or he hadn't told her too much. "Ms Harper made us lab partners. Erin's squeamish and I'm not, and..."

She looked bored. Then sharp as a knife the next question cut in. "What happened to your hands?"

_Smell of the blood still and all perfumes of—_

"Nothing. They're clean."

The newest grave—the one that looked newest (George Turnbridge, _beloved father and grandfather_, eighty-nine, words etched dark in white stone) hadn't had disturbed earth. I hadn't seen changes, hadn't dug into black ground at the sides of concrete, groping for something below that killed deer, dirt over hands and under nails until the side of an intact coffin scraped and wounded—

I didn't look down. She touched them, hand over bare hand. I backed into the wall of her study but with elbows against the hard surface there was nowhere to run to.

"Don't lie. I've told you not to lie," Ms Enn's voice cut sharply. "Doesn't your father deserve better than this crap? Gordon didn't have to take you in, he could well have left you in foster care, deserves better than a troublemaking maniac—you tell me."

"Let me go."

"You don't understand simple rules. It's not a difficult thing to ask, is it? Answer me. Tell me all about how chronically unstable you're feeling." Nails scraped over my skin and the voice faded to grey. I beat against something darkening in my head. The foreign hands were warm and scraped against a broken nail.

_DON'T HIT HER DON'T HIT HER._

"Are you trying to hit on me?" I said.

I heard her laugh. She released me; I couldn't properly hear. "Scrawny teenagers aren't my taste in men. Have you looked in a mirror lately, kid? Don't. It would negatively impact your self-esteem— Don't be an idiot. Look at me."

Eventually I brought myself to face her. Long straight dark brows, light brown skin—an iridescent blue feather clip glittering in flame-colored hair— She didn't fade away with exaggerated visions of what she was or was not.

"What if I promise not to do it again?" I said.

"The problem's that I've heard it before." Ms Enn stood too close. She shrugged. "You tell me what should happen to mentally deficient kids acting up. As if they haven't got their illness under control."

_There are no such thing as vampires or monsters, monsters who aren't in human shape—_

"I'm trying not to do anything to anyone," I muttered. Nobody touched me any more; that was enough.

"Not hard enough. Unbalanced, harassing—inappropriate words to a teacher, potentially violent—are you going to tell me how you did that to your fingernails?—complained of—" she lectured. "Much as I'd rather avoid my overtime, you seem to be unable to get by without supervision. Stop making empty promises. Why did they place you in a mainstream school? You—"

I looked down at her floor. She kept on speaking; anger. It turned out that she had a lot to say—I didn't need to interrupt.

"—defiant, ungrateful," she finished, words trying to burn. Time had passed. "I'm very disappointed."

"I'm disappointed in myself too." _In a lack of forethought._

"You need to manage yourself. I will be speaking to Glen Charles." Her voice had shifted to a cold, clear grey. "No, I don't need you to answer back about this. Off you go. We've wasted enough time today."

I couldn't act and prove her right about everything. I walked away and nobody spoke to me. Back in Gordon's house, I pictured, at the back of the desk, a thick brown book cover, fifty-four dollars hidden there, enough to get out of here to one of the near cities, then disappear like I already knew how to do, sleep out alone, hitch a ride up the road—it was a choice. I knew most of the ways Mom kept us safe from notice over the years. A chance. You have nothing to lose but your chance of seeing your mother, and your questionable sanity and your mind... Tell yourself you have a choice. I went to a bathroom sink and washed my hands like Pontius Pilate.

_Oh, it's not that I violently attack trees, it's doing so and having no memory of it. Next time..._

There were the motorbike racks after school; I saw Monty walking away with Lebegue, the tall one out of their group.

"I didn't see Bodhi today." Nat and Israel came from the direction of the science wing; I saw they moved quickly as if to start a race. There was a cold wind from the west, shaking the trees beyond. Black jackets flapped loose and jangled with silver zippers.

"No, you wouldn't. None of them were here," Monty said. He buckled on the helmet.

"—Yeah, fine, I'll pick up Fane—" Leb volunteered.

"Where are you off to?" I heard Nat's bike spring into action and the rider yell an impatient call.

"Look, I told you. Listen good," Monty said quickly. "If I have to tell you to fuck off one more time it ends in violence. Exactly what Bodhi whined about only to us, right? And that's freakin' queer is what it is. I don't like you, and yeah—stupid pawn. You won't need to rely on her toys to break you next time."

He scowled fiercely; it was all very serious; the bike roared into action and swerved past me so close I felt the heat from the engine. I saw his grimace and understood at last. Nearly ran me down—

_Well, that did rather explain things._

_I'll be talking with Dr Charles. And there is nothing you can do about it._

Let Gordon do what he liked about going to school.

I took a bowl of ramen upstairs and left a second on the stove; a late shift for Gordon. At sunset I measured out the pills carefully. The shelves were crammed with paperbacks and loose papers; more than I'd kept before. I read over an old sheet of history notes and saw my own incoherency clear as day.

_Out of focus. Scattered. Stepped away._

There was the emperor's death mixed in with memories of Cassandra's disbelieved visions of the future—because she didn't want the god Apollo to kiss her, something more than a kiss in some stories, and he gave her the unwanted gift that nobody would believe her—and then the story of Elagabalus, Heliogabalus like the sun, asphyxiating people by burying them in rose petals as a symbol of decadence and a reason why the empire was falling—

_Check the timeline; Elagabalus was the previous emperor. The story about the rose petals never really happened_, the teacher had written.

The tangled paragraphs tried to twist around a point. _Is it inevitable? Should there have been unlistened-to visions that this emperor would also fall once the wars began? Alexander Severus never had enough power in the armies—like Cassandra's homeland where nobody would hear her..._ I put the paper down.

_This is what I can be when my head's not nearly so clear as I think it is. But I make connections I wouldn't make thinking flat and plain—the part in my head that makes me rant is the part that gives me color in dreams. There's two halves and they fight and one cannot kill the other—_

I reached for another slim paperback, green-covered and plain. Words had rules in the maze, syllables and echoes and rhythm; read and escape as always. _Steinbeck, agricultural exports, cosine logarithms—hollow stuff._

_When you ask to be told about the rabbits it's something his saner friend already knows can't ever happen. It's like the idea of a peaceful country far away from all the city crowds—it will never turn out the way you want._ I turned to Tess' ending.

I slept dreamlessly though intermittently; sounds downstairs woke me vaguely, fog without colour in my head. You could tell it was only Gordon down there in the faint light. I didn't need to talk to him. I closed my eyes and tried to return to sleep. My fingers twitched. Physical restlessness; mental tiredness. Gordon stepped to the stove and back again; cupboard; laundry room. Back and forth as if for no reason. Then I heard the sound of a number being dialled. When I began to recognise words I opened the door as quietly as I could to listen in the dark. I'd no scruples about eavesdropping. The footsteps went back and forth again, covering over words.

"Helen, I can work with you and Jon on this, but not if you don't answer direct questions. I'm a cop. I work with evidence..." She must have answered something in Gordon's pause.

"Yes, my son," he said. The next words were unintelligible; I couldn't move closer without being seen. "...vague. I have from him that he tries to ignore her. He needs a chance. Maybe even a second chance. Rules— He's the one who came home with..." The footsteps moved too heavily to hear his half of the conversation. "I'm not saying your sister-in-law is a liar. I'm saying none of this is specific. _You_ take it up with the school. I will in my own way.

"You need proof. A fair trial. He's disturbed, but I..."

I'd fantasised that he'd say anything but this. I closed the door without a sound and sat on the bed, drawing my knees up to my chin. Black and blue spread across the underside of closed eyelids. The blank darkness closed in.

A few days later there was a notebook, new, not the cheapest kind; pen and paper; time passing away. I caught the daylight of another weekend afternoon through the window. In enough time everything goes away.

_"Let's experiment,"_ I wrote; he said. "_You can write down how it makes you feel, re-read it afterward, and make a decision._"

"_Are you going to ask to inspect it?_"_ I asked of him._

"_No. Your privacy is important._"I transposed letters to pen it even so; wrote word-substitutes that rhymed; disguised it with school formulae in the margins; scribbled messily to do the opposite of aiding understanding.

"_I don't like Ms Enn. She touches me without asking."_

"_Yes, I know,"_ said Doctor Charles. "_Your sensory defensiveness. Melissa put a hand on your arm, didn't she? We do need to help you get over that. Human contact is very normal and it harms you to miss out. You can't live as an island._"

"_I don't want her help."_

"_Well, that's your choice to make._"

_"It's not."_ I'd sat with one leg up; knotted fingers around it. A nervous gesture.

_"She _is_ the only one at your school. It's a small town. Melissa may not have as many formal qualifications as some, but she's careful to ask me for general advice when she needs it. She's a good person. Sometimes it takes an effort from both people to get along—especially if they both feel a little out of their depth._"

_"Are you saying she's afraid of me?"_

And I shouldn't have said that, and not nearly so hopefully.

"_Or—she doesn't like me? Is that the key? That it's not that it's difficult for me but if it's difficult for _her_, you'd think she should stop it? Ms Enn would matter and I don't?_"

But the doctor sighed and shook his head. _"You understand the concept of paranoia."_

"_Of course. Incorrectly believing they're all out to get you. I know—my mother—in retrospect I didn't see much proof that all she said about the people chasing her was true—although there obviously were people looking for us, and I don't remember a lot of the first few years—"_ Analysis might say there I'd nearly lost control.

You could suppose Doctor Charles' voice was gentle enough by some lights, and he was old and quite frail-looking. _"That's what it means, yes. For a homeless kid you're pretty well-educated. Quite the autodidact. In that sense your mother raised you well. You like Thomas Hardy, right? Social worker's report mentioned you picked up on novels."_

_"I've always been able to read. She made sure I did. So that's—exodidact? Allodidact? Hardy knows how to use words. My mother was good."_

_"Let's not argue that for now,"_ the calm voice agreed.

_I want to be able to see her on my own_, I wrote down, _and if you read this and don't understand why any more, then you've lost yourself. Run away. It's inside the Charles Dickens cover._

_"If I do, can you sign off on the supervised driving? You practise with an adult driver—it's not too dangerous..."_

_"With your father...hmm. All right. After the first week. Be careful."_

_"It frightens me. I'm afraid I'll lose myself. I'm told I still talk and write in that state—but I've had trouble remembering what happened to me. I follow the path of least resistance, I do that a lot normally, but not like that, I don't want to be so calm that I'd do anything anyone said— It frightens me to admit it."_

_"I understand. What we need from you is to work on your emotional balance, okay? Don't cheat. You can't prove anything by lying. Ask your father to sign off."_

_It's another of those moments when I don't have a real choice,_ I wrote. _If it's a little, only a little..._

I glanced down at the broken nail on my left hand.

_I'm not worried about what I do. I'm concerned about being caught for it._

—


	21. Squeals, Affrights, and Alarums

I had the permit midway through November. The snow chains I'd helped put on the wheels ground over slippery roads; it wasn't easy to steer. Pale light sleet fell from the sky, covering most of what there was to see.

Gordon released a deep breath when I turned near to the school.

"Carpark looks busy. Get out here?" He noted another fifteen minutes' practice behind the wheel in the small logbook. Forty-three hours and ten minutes to go. "The weather's not ideal. Don't walk back, I'll pick you up, it's freezing..."

I let him back into the driver's seat and got down from the truck, drawing my jacket hood below the sleet, hands in pockets. Cold grey weather. People ignored me; I was enough myself to know that the colours weren't as vivid as they could be; I saw my mother four days ago and put an arm around her shoulders for a moment and I thought she smiled once.

Bodhi's ink-black hair stood out even at a distance; it seemed to have been last week her suspension was over. I'd noticed changing faces in her group, another girl added besides Anova Dawn, a boy with blue-dyed hair and a guitar often slung over his back, replacing Jason and a brown-haired boy. Distant. I walked behind a row of parked cars. Gordon had already vanished on the road. A pale-leafed withering tree shivered behind its enclosure. The wind was harsh and the frost slippery underfoot. I looked down; try to remember words and remind that rhymes are especially easy to echo. Cars slid loudly into position and people yelled to their friends. The ice over a black puddle cracked below my feet; a low-slung brown car was frosted over beside me. I ran a finger along the metal to draw a line of melting water.

It was a second after the loud shriek of a machine out of control that I looked up. Scenes flashed, vividly colored for once: aside, distant, short ink-black hair above an electric blue parka. Imogen Winthrop's heavy maroon van zigzagging on the icy road, wheels screaming. Two purple-gloved hands tore a black wheel back and forth—and above them, Imogen's face, white as birch bark, hurtling toward me.

And there was no chance to run.

I remember something grabbing me by the shoulders, then pulling away. Something struck the front bar of the van, something pale. Imogen spun away, red hair and black-jacketed shoulders behind a black wheel, slowing in motion, a crunch when she drove through an empty boot and hidden when a yellowed airbag blew up in her face—

We were three cars away from the black marks on the road and the crash. Bodhi Cullen pushed me away from her.

"Im! Imogen, you're breathing in there, right? No bleeding on me—" Suddenly Bodhi was wrenching open the maroon door; pulling out Imogen Winthrop by her jacketed arm and seeing that she could stand on her feet. She wasn't cut as far as I could see, not hurt, none of us harmed, white and tottering in her steps.

"You were on the other side," I said. "Other side."

Had there been black finger-shaped dents in that smashed front fender? Impossible. Imogen swayed back and forth and there were other people coming, too many by far, fair-haired Erin, the boy from the maths class, faces—

"—Yeah, being a fucking _superhero_, that's what I've done now!" Bodhi dragged Imogen back toward me—she grabbed my wrist and raised our hands in the air, a victory gesture as if she'd won some prize— "Saving Xavier's life here—hey, Imogen, might want to take notes here for the school paper—"

I saw Monty Black's face in the crowd: he stared only at Bodhi, as if he disbelieved something in his sight.

"Oh my god," Imogen repeated. "Oh my god. I almost killed you. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry, oh my god I'm so sorry, I'm sorry. Oh my god, Dad's going to ground me forever and never going to let me in a car again as long as I live. Oh my god, I wrecked Seung Ji's ride. And the van. And nearly you. Hey, you know I didn't mean to kill you, all right? I'm so, so sorry, X-guy..." Her freckled face crumpled together; she almost cried.

The van would have crushed me a moment later...

I could remember Imogen's story in the graveyard, warmth by the green vines. "I believe you." Bodhi let me go.

"Jeez, reporter-girl, where's your notes?" she said. "Heroic Bodhi fucking rescues people, even him—when interviewed, the heroine of the day flung back her curls and stated it was easy—"

"Noted especially for her modesty, that shy, humble, Bodhi Cullen—" Imogen barked out half a laugh in her shaking throat.

"—Saved Xavier Swan from like being massively crushed from shoulder to knees, blood spatter would've been at least two-foot radius, probably smash open his head from the car behind too with brains over Hari's Mustang, guts spread on your fender, crack open his ribs and have his heart gush open—"

Imogen looked paler and ill. Erin came running up between everyone crowding in, small and fair and very quick—

She pointed to a boy in the group. "Yoshiro, I want you to go to the nurse's office right now and tell him what happened. Bronwyn, can you keep everyone else away...p-please?" I saw them do as she said. She looked up at me, stuttering only a little, determination shining out of her face for once, like the time she had helped Bodhi out of class. "Xavier, are you hurt? You should sit down...you s-should be in shock at some point... Bodhi?" Then she placed a hand on her friend's waist. "It's all right, Imogen. Do you feel any pain? You should...p-probably not relieve what happened immediately—" She looked up at Bodhi, surprisingly vicious for a moment out of wide blue eyes. Then she shook her head. "Bodhi—you did something very brave and good..."

"You were too fast," I told Bodhi. I wiped a hand on my forehead; strangely sweaty. "Impossible. It wasn't possible. Over there."

"Of course it was possible!" she said; she raised a hand as if she wanted to slap me. Then lowered it. "My freaking stupid brother won't let me join the track team. Bodhi Cullen is _exactly_ this fucking good, bitches!"

Someone cheered her on, though Bronwyn was herding people away from staring.

"And I saved your life," Bodhi said, more quietly. Erin tended to bruises on Imogen, gentle with her friend. She stepped close, watching me, pale face unflushed by it all. "Doesn't that mean I own you?"

"No. It doesn't." I had both my hands on her blue shoulders—pushed her away. She smiled.

"Worth a try."

Then Kovalics came—the school nurse. He forced us up; called a county ambulance; and someone must have called Gordon and have him turn around and return, for I saw him running across the school carpark.

—

They took us to the hospital; Erin stayed in the ambulance, comforting Imogen; I didn't speak. Not dead, unhurt, not—breaking insane.

"I think he might have a concussion or, like, something," Bodhi said, "I saw his neck kind of jerking when I pulled him out of the way..."

"Bodhi, what have you done now?" I felt my hands twitch at the cold voice. Jon Cullen still made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, still cold, wearing blue surgical scrubs this time and transparent gloves over his pale hands— Staring down at his sister, dark eyes instead of gold, white-faced and frozen. "A police escort _and_ an ambulance this time."

"Hey, this time I was the freakin' hero, big brother." She stared down at the ground beyond the ambulance door; then she pulled on my arm, and dragged me out beside her. "Saved his life when Im Winthrop tried to run him over! I'm the good guy! This is him, Jon, Chief Swan's kid, check him over if you like—"

"I don't want anything. I don't need anything. Not from you." Bodhi's touch felt distant; I wrenched away from it. "Imogen or Erin. You go to them instead." Two medics and a driver; Gordon; Bodhi; her brother; Imogen and Erin behind; a second doctor I'd never seen before; people crowded in the hospital's reception. "Not me. I don't need anything."

Doctor Cullen's expression did not change. "Lucas, take the boy to a bed. I will examine Miss Winthrop. Bodhi, take a seat and amuse yourself quietly. Thank you, Robert, Paula—now let us not turn this hospital into a circus." I saw him shoo Erin away; her right hand flew, birdlike, to cover her mouth.

"Can't you get me out of here? I'm unhurt." Gordon was still there; I sat on the hospital bed, shoes still on, staining the white sheets. "I don't want to be here, I shouldn't have to be here—have me discharged. Please." The words were shards like ice—if I left them unsaid or went below the water, I'd splinter—see things I couldn't see. Put it all back for now.

"You need help," he said. "I was worried." He reached out a hand to me, but stopped midway again.

"Just leave me alone for an hour. An hour. Then I'll be all right. If I was with my mother it'd be even easier— Just need a chance to think things through—talk to myself—calm down. I didn't do anything, I haven't done anything, it wasn't my fault this time. What can I say to convince you? Tell me what I have to say—don't I get a chance to make up my own mind? Plenty of car accidents every day. It's not the first time something bad's happened. Here nothing bad happened, that's the whole full point. I've got to leave with you."

"Calm down and listen to yourself," Gordon said. He was probably right. I didn't think about what had just happened—

"I'm saying I'm quite well. There's no need to keep me here. Let's go, Dad."

He put out his hands to stop me. "They need to see you. Stress—shock—you need to let them do their jobs. Hang in there, okay? Take the day off school."

"Not Doctor Cullen. Someone else than him. Maybe Doctor Charles."

"Why? You don't know him." Gordon drew in the corners of his mouth. "His sister saved your life today."

"I know. Remind me to thank her later. It is irrational. I suppose you only see that as a symptom—but I don't need anything." I sat up, cross-legged, straight-backed. The words still came far too quickly. "Like I've said. Repeatedly, with synonyms. Can't you listen?"

"If you want to be alone to collect your thoughts, I can wait outside," he offered. "Breathe. Don't worry. They won't keep you long."

I was alone, sitting straight-backed, when a nurse wheeled in a small trolley. She was quite tall; full-figured; I saw a broad dark brown face below a mass of curly hair starting to grey. Jon Cullen was shorter, I remembered, obviously shorter than Gordon that time before. A nametag called her LIA ANDERS. There was a full syringe among her supplies.

"Roll up your sleeve," she said, "doctor's orders."

"Which doctor?" I was calmer, now; folded my arms carefully. "I'm not interested, thanks. I was uninjured."

She shook her head. "Doctor Cullen's orders," she said. "There's no need to make a fuss. Honestly! My son was braver about shots when he was five. Hold out your arm so I can swab it first. You don't want to make me call security."

"Am I insufficiently coherent for an early discharge?" I spoke more slowly; having had a moment to put myself back together. "Can you tell me why I'm still here?"

"This is to calm you down for now. You're stressed; it's understandable; the doctor will make sure it's nothing worse than that. Now hold still and stop fussing, or I'll have to call extra help. That's it. Relax. Not so bad, was it?"

It's not the needle; foreign substance damaging your blood.

"I'm not supposed to be here long. You'll discharge me soon?" It wouldn't have started to have an effect yet. There was a small bead of blood on my arm, covered by a translucent plaster.

"If the doctor says so." The pager on her belt beeped; she looked down. "Get some rest, kid."

It was still. I drew up my knees to my chest, learning against the bedhead, making sure to sit up. I was tired; it made you rest when you didn't want to rest. Made thoughts run slower. I didn't close my eyes. Swing down from the bed and try walking away, moving as if you'd every right to go. Yet I couldn't. Path of least resistance, and you wait for the best moment to run away. Like my mother. It was grey and soft and slow, and I wasn't any more as worried as I should have been.

Jon Cullen; nobody else in the room. He was fair, his hair scarcely a shade below Erin's; he was paler than her, pale as his sister. Taller than her. Aside from their identical pallor there was little in his features akin to her, bar a suggestion about his cheekbones. He wore blue-black circles below his eyes. His glance was dark, not amber-gold.

He reached his right hand close toward me, and then dropped it back to his side.

"I frighten you. Why is that?"

I had to speak slowly. "I didn't enjoy my last experience in a hospital."

_Your sister does impossible things. A fair man and three women, one very pale with tarred hair..._

"I see," he said. I could not tell at all what he meant by that; probably not even if the world spun faster. "My sister worries your bones were jarred. So I am going to have X-rays taken, and if you feel sufficiently calm you will be discharged."

The reason why I wasn't hit was because she pulled me out of the way. People probably shouldn't be able to move that fast.

The doctor stood close and still. "Mrs Cullen spoke to me before. She wanted me to be sent away, confined somewhere else," I said.

"That's irrelevant here and now. If you wish to know the story in brief: my dear wife has a tendency to be overprotective, and in turn my more volatile sister resents her guardianship. You're of an age to accept or reject offers made in a charitable spirit."

"Rejecting." There was nothing to be made of him but ice. I looked down at my hands, woven over each other. He was, perhaps, the head of the family.

"Your medical record describes you as mildly schizophrenic," Doctor Cullen said. "You have no blood-borne diseases, you've been slightly undernourished, and your dental issues are improving. You've undergone physical labour; not a damaging point, for most of the youth of today are chronically lazy. You've been under recent mental stress."

"All in all, you're going to let me go."

"Why would you suppose otherwise?" he asked. Slightly bared teeth flashed a blinding white.

—


	22. Who was changed, and who was dead

_...That moment I was hers alone._  
_Perfect and fair my mistress crowned_  
_And tribute she sought. I was her own._  
_In one long yellow string she bound_  
_Three times the throat of one I found,_  
_And strangled her. Porphyria fed:_  
_And sated scarlet-lipped her need._ _—_PORPHYRIA'S LOVER, excerpt.

_—_

She was running after me, fast as anyone on the track team, catching up to me by the main doors, dark hair above a cream-colored sweater flowing around her neck and arms. Things had changed enough that I didn't try to run from her.

"You're welcome for the rescue, I'd like to announce to the whole school that I've changed my mind about you, and I think we should be friends now," Bodhi said. She pouted: a rosebud-like expression, black-coloured. Her pale cheeks were not flushed as they should be following a run in the cold wind.

I looked at the ground, frosted over still. She wore the same high heels as always, long thin stilettos stabbing into the floor—no, these were new, and not scraped by ice and asphalt.

She did that run in high heels, if not backward.

"No. Not ever. I'm not your friend, and you're nobody's friend. I know what you did to Jenessa."

Bodhi cocked her head to the side. "Jenessa who? No, really, I don't get it. Scratch me for the truth and see."

I said a few short, sharp sentences.

"Oh, that thing in freshman year, or was it soph? Ages ago! Funny you heard about it." She laughed once.

"And your friends gathered to beat me up. I don't know if you asked them or not."

"Nope. If I'd told them I'd have been there. Lemmings, that's what those losers are. Fucking lemmings, they'll do anything to impress me. It's starting to get really boring. I'm gonna dump the lot of them. How's that for calling it even? Come on—shake my hand and say you don't hate me any more." She tossed her thick black curls.

"I don't resent you," I told her. "You've never had power over me. I just don't like you."

Then she changed her posture, shifting forward, raising her shoulders, one hand lifted away from her waist. She stepped out of herself for a moment and became something that was not a teenage girl: cold and fevered and alien. It did not last.

"Power of life and death much?" she demanded, as if she held bones between her hands to crack them like eggshells.

_You do impossible things. But it is mostly your brother who freezes the skin on the back of my neck, though he has done nothing._

"That was only briefly. There are worse things than that."

"I know. I'm surprised that you do," Bodhi said. Her dark lips curved upward. "I'll see what I can do."

There were too many people who knew what had happened; asking questions for their curiosity, mouthing some courtesies. I saw Imogen with a bandaged right wrist, Erin and tall Misha both at her side; she looked exhausted and ill, brick-red hair loose and limp over her freckles, and tried to apologise again. And then it grew worse after an English class.

"I'm sorry. For everything," Kevin-or-Rick said, and ran off in the other direction.

"We got it wrong, man. Sorry and all," Leon-or-Jason said before gym class.

"Hey, Swan? Yeah, I owe you an apology," Anova Dawn said, fiddling with the clasps of a silver charm bracelet. "Take it, okay?"

"I'm sorry for, like, what happened," Jamie-or-Zach said at the beginning of history class. "Won't do it again."

HEY, WHAT'S THE— Jenessa wrote.

_Someone nearly ran me down and it wasn't you?_ I answered.

TALK ABOUT YOUR SURPRISES. I thought the tone was cheerful. Ms Enn watched, sometimes—maybe saving things up. YOU'RE OKAY? Jenessa asked.

_Yes. Very._

IM'S UPSET. MAKE SURE SHE KNOWS YOU KNOW SHE DIDN'T MEAN IT. YOU WERE GOING TO DO THAT ANYWAY, RIGHT?

_Sure. I do believe that._

Among a variety of other things I'd come to believe. I scribbled an answer on the current worksheet for bathing. Twice I'd written out what I remembered of Bodhi's feat, in half-code and illegible to almost anyone else; and hid it separately.

GOOD. IT DOESN'T MAKE MISS FERRET LESS OF A BULLY, YOU KNOW.

_Yes._

I saw Bodhi outside a maths classroom; caught up to her talking to the boy with the guitar. She turned.

"Off you go, then," she told him, and he did as he said. "Hey, have you seen what I've done yet? Making them all say they're very, very sorry?"

"It's disturbing. Stop it." She tapped one heel to the ground, a hand draped with a flowing sleeve lying on her waist.

"Okay, I'll call them off, then. You're not as easy to please as most, are you?" She was beside me now, looking up at my face. Dark clouds gathered outside the window behind her.

"Maybe I'm curious. Why do they all do what you say?"

"Oh, one of my brother's radioactive experiments bit me." She walked on, her face turning mobile, making animated gestures. "Because they think I'm pretty and special and really talented at playing basketball—just have a look."

Then she posed in front of the window, a faint reflection in the glass, as if she wanted to show for certain that her face came to her in mirrors.

She smiled at herself and scraped a stray spot of black from the corner of her lips. "I am, aren't I? I can't help being unbelievably gorgeous and athletic. Fucking Ronnie thinks she's the queen of everything, but plenty of them go for me."

"Ms Harper doesn't listen to you."

"Yeah, well, Mizz Harper's not a dyke like— I know so many things. Like, Erin notices you don't like to get handsy. But you liked the cow my brother married, didn't you? Until she started whining. What about Ronnie, do you think she's pretty? Antony?"

"While you're doing favors, could you make everyone else ignore me?" I said.

Bodhi took a step away from me, drawing a finger slowly along the curve of her right cheek. "I'm good but not that good."

What she could do was inhuman, I remembered. Her shoes made her taller, shoulder height to me; she looked small-boned and delicate, translucent in faint reflection, but below her skin perhaps white worms crawled— It was hard to see.

I knew panhandlers who slept in the open and yelled at people about the coming apocalypse, about the CIA and aliens and things that could not exist. And learning words did not help you there: some could quote Shakespeare or talk about physics even while they blended it with shatters of dreams.

"So you have limits. That's good to know."

"Fewer than you." She scowled as if I'd won a point from her; she turned on a heel. "I'll see you later."

It was no reassuring promise. She strode gracefully and quickly away.

_It'll die down soon enough of itself._ She kept her word about her friends as far as I could tell; most teachers were normal enough. Perhaps the sedative they'd given at the hospital still hadn't worn off.

_Enough to mind and think about having a mind._ It had to be enough. Nothing had happened to me; I'd told Gordon so.

I wandered into the cafeteria and saw Jenessa sitting against a wall: and Bodhi leaning over her like a flash of grey mould.

I ran clumsily. "What are you doing to her this time? Haven't you done enough?"

Jenessa shook her head from side to side and Bodhi straightened from her position against the wall.

"Hey, it's not quite like that..." Bodhi teased.

CALM DOWN. I looked at Jenessa's screen. MISS BONEHEAD FINALLY LEARNED HOW TO SAY SORRY. LOOKS LIKE YOU REALLY CAN GROW BRAINCELLS BETWEEN FRESHMAN AND JUNIOR YEAR.

Bodhi grinned. "Just talking," she said, and turned back to Jenessa. She spoke as if she truly wanted to be enthusiastic. "No, really, they let you fix Mercedes computers? Jon's got an SL65 but he doesn't let me mod it—"

YOUR BROTHER DRIVES OVERPRICED FOREIGN CRAP, Jenessa typed back. Bodhi giggled—almost happily.

"Yeah, I _know_! And yes, Antony's red Ferrari _is_ because he's deeply insecure about the size of his penis," Bodhi said. Jenessa laughed with her. "I put in a catback last year—installed it myself—got an extra twenty—"

SHOULDA USED A 80 MM, Jenessa answered; they both seemed to understand what that meant.

"Yeah, but I was worried about the gauge—"

I could understand neither of them. From looking at them I could see no sign that Bodhi forced her to answer. Bodhi gestured energetically, and Jenessa smiled as she typed out details with words like mandrel bends and turbo engines and barcode names for devices. They followed each other quickly.

I took out a book and sat on the ground beside Jenessa, looking up every few minutes to make sure that Bodhi was not trying to harm her again.

HEY, DON'T YOU HAVE CLASS IN SOME OTHER DIRECTION? Jenessa asked me, going her separate way. SEE YOU.

Silvery rain fell outdoors, lightening the cloud cover. English; geography; last history. It was starting to be quieter already. I waited outside. I saw Alora, walking with Veronica and Antony: called to her.

_She did seem nice._

Alora turned. Her foster siblings—or whatever they were—flanked her. Antony and Veronica seemed to mirror each other, he following her every motion. "Oh! You. The ice was horrible," Alora said, pigtailed head cocked to one side. "I'm glad you and Immy were okay."

"I saw what your sister did. It all fits together." Too cryptic. "I want to know—what does she want with Jenessa? What's she planning now?"

Veronica slowly shook her smooth head. She was tall, beautiful; you noticed it when she was near you, perfect as a statue carved out of lacquered wood. The shape of her long face and curved skull, her high neck graceful above the sharply pressed white collar of her shirt. "He is a lunatic after all, dear," she told her foster sister. "And looks like something the cat dragged in. Then vomited up."

She seemed as indifferent as she should have been, simple disdain in her words. There was something inanimate and impersonal to her: a shade too perfectly ironed and starched from smooth straight braids to well-shined shoes. Cold like Doctor Cullen. Antony scowled beside her; it seemed a common expression on him. He was clearly muscled, most likely on the point of some sort of knuckle-cracking; dark-haired; olive-skinned though light-eyed; heavy-featured; glowering. I tried not to run back.

"Ronnie, that's a very mean thing to say about anyone. There's nothing wrong with being a lunatic," Alora scolded. "Bodhi's not poison to most people. Jenessa, I'm not sure I know her at all. That's not much of a plan..." She stared at me, her eyes wide and amber-colored. "Keep being careful, Xavier. But we have to get home before it gets dark."

I took a step after them to ask again; but Antony turned, glaring. "You leave my family alone. Were you staring at Veronica? You don't do that unless you want a taste of my fist."

They moved away—red Ferrari and small pink car—and they were gone.

_There's nothing really I can do._ I waited.

"I'll drive again. The roads are still slippery, and I'd say that to any kid. Should've closed down the school— We might get some better weather before winter sets in," Gordon complained. I didn't answer back. "How are you?" he demanded.

"I'm well. Possibly still feeling the sedative." The windscreen wipers flew past the rain.

"That should have worn off in hours," Gordon said. "You need to go back to the hospital?"

"No, of course not." Jon; his sister; Helen; their children. Of a sort. _A lunatic after all._ It ought to be a full moon tonight. _I don't see enough colours—still fighting my way through grey mud._

After dark Gordon and I worked on the evening meal together; I mixed the components of a potato salad and smelt frying fish sticks. Falling back into a long silence.

"How was school?" he asked by rote. "You looked both ways this time?"

"I don't usually get run over. Or nearly so." Gordon had tended to stay closer in the last two days; maybe he'd drop out of it soon enough.

"Well, keep that up. Have something good to tell your mother." He sighed. I squeezed in mayonnaise; one person could easily have done both tasks.

"Fish on Fridays," he said to himself. "It's a bit too soon—but I remembered. You used to like these, you called them shark fingers. I think I even remembered the right brand we had together, the blue packets." The golden-brown breadcrumbs sizzled in the pan. You could tell Gordon worked at it. He hadn't let me be taken somewhere Helen Cullen suggested.

It would be fairer to be honest with him. "You remember a child. But I don't even remember being that child. In a lot of ways we're strangers."

His mouth opened as if he were about to reply and I thought I heard something, but then he stopped. Turned back to the stove. Behind him in the dark window clouds covered the sky. It was quiet again over the meal.

_I'm alive_, I wrote, setting away in the early morning, still close to the road but not in sight of it.

_Alive as I could be? Maybe not._

_She doesn't want me dead. I don't want her anywhere near Jenessa._

_This isn't very clear. I'll tell you about it when you can hear me, Mom._ I held the notebook above my head, lying back and scribbling upwards, cold early light shining past changing leaves. I paused.

_She does impossible things after breakfast and I swear I saw truly. She's an irrelevant, small-minded bully. She's self-obsessed and a liar and grandiose and disgustingly rash._

_I don't care._

_What happened on the ice is over._

—

A/N: Title from Longfellow.


	23. Fearful Symmetry

A/N: Over on AO3, I posted a story in which Christian Grey (the abusive stalker billionaire Edward knockoff) gets his, courtesy of Bodhi. archiveofourown org works / 569514, 'Monstrance'.

Swinburne is quoted again.

—

"Julia, what do you think of Bodhi Cullen?" I asked early; neither Jenessa nor Ms Enn had come to class. The tall girl looked up from her carefully neatened desk.

"Rafe and me don't like you," she said slowly. "You and Jenessa don't look at us in class, because you think we're dumb. Rafe is nice, so he can talk to you. I'm not nice. Go away, bad boy."

"Rafe?"

"Bodhi is pretty," the boy said. "Paul said she saved you."

"That's verifiable enough—her egotism, her hubris, her invalid presumptions and transgressions—" They didn't understand. Ms Enn walked in and silenced everything.

_You're late_, I slipped a note to Jenessa when she finally came. _Were you with Bodhi again? Did she try anything?_ The pen tore a small hole through the paper.

She seemed to glare. LOOK, she typed, and showed me the screen. BODHI CULLEN'S A SUPERFICIAL MEATHEADED BITCH WHO CHANGES FRIENDS MORE OFTEN THAN CLOTHES, USED TO BULLY PEOPLE, AND HAS ALL THE GRACES OF A BLIND VELOCIRAPTOR. THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR?

_Yes. More than you know—_ I thought.

SHE'S ALSO INTO CARS. REALLY INTO CARS, Jenessa wrote. IT'S FUN TO TALK TO ANOTHER GEARHEAD. SHE'S REAL QUICK AT GETTING WHAT I'M SAYING, TOO. FASTER THAN YOU, SWAN.

SO IS IT JUST HER YOU WANT SERVED UP WITH A SIDE OF BRUTAL HONESTY, OR YOU WANT MORE?

"Pay attention." Ms Enn chalked up a table on the blackboard, screeching across it.

I wrote again. _What if she's really a vampire? She glamors people, some people, not everyone—_

Jenessa slammed her head against the side of her chair, and typed three letters:

GOD.

Then:

YOU ACTUALLY THINK YOU'RE SERIOUS.

AND THAT'S WHY YOU MADE ME LOOK, DIDN'T YOU? she went on.

WELL, I DIDN'T NOTICE HER LOOKING FUNNY AT MY NECK WHEN I GAVE HER FREE ADVICE. Jenessa's screen flickered back to some sort of work, flashing too quickly; I looked away and tried to write more calmly.

_Monty Black practically told me she was. Then she got me out of the way from the car and she was too fast to be human. It's _evidence.

SHE SHOVED YOU OUT OF THE WAY OF A CAR AND YOU THINK IT'D BE FUN IF SHE WAS A SUPERHERO. GUESS I'VE TOLD YOU TOO MANY STORIES. ALMOST ANYONE CAN SHOVE PEOPLE OUT OF THE WAY OF CARS.

_It's more complicated than that._ I tried to draw a diagram. _She was all the way over there, and then she ran, and then the van changed direction on the road and she touched it. It happened!_

OKAY. HOW ABOUT YOU THINK OF IT THS WAY, she slowly spelled out. MY RESEARCH SAYS, VAMPIRES LIKE TO SNACK ON THE STRONGEST, FITTEST HUMANS. YOU'RE CRAZY. YOU'RE OFF THE LIST.

_She hurt you once_, I wrote back, because that was a fragment of reality she believed in too, _and I won't let her do it again._

Not that I'd worked out how I could.

_Stay away from her—_ I wrote.

I KNOW YOU'VE GOT ISSUES BUT SITTING NEXT TO ME IN CLASS DOESN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO SAY WHO I TALK TO. EVEN IF SHE'S A JERK. Then Jenessa's screen changed back to her own work, dizzying graphics flashing too quickly for me.

It made some sense if Chase was mad because of what Bodhi did to Anova and wanted to scare her away, I thought, walking alone between classes. How far her glamor—she was popular and that meant power, it didn't work on everyone. Jenessa did not compliment her. She thought Officer Dosan would let her go if she asked nicely and that didn't work—perhaps it was still only that she was pretty and wealthy and people liked her. It didn't matter to me—only if there were things out there violating the laws of reality I ought to know. I saw things, and I knew some of them hadn't been real—

_Oh, there's the alternative explanation I hallucinated. Car rescue. Storytelling. Giant wolf. Jon Cullen._

Bodhi shoved her way past a group of younger girls and back toward me. She didn't try to touch, but stood and stared. She wore faint perfume: something vaguely floral, sweeter than you'd expect from her. I tried to pass by.

"Hey, you like being alone, don't you?" she said.

"Imagine that. Did it take you very long to work it out?"

"No, come on—there's a place in school where nobody goes. I know it, but except for me and a couple of others there's no one, somewhere you'll like. Come with me." She held out a pale hand. "Maybe you'll like this one."

Like a stray cat toying with something it hunted. Or like a Cheshire cat wanting someone to fall down a rabbit hole.

Bodhi walked up to an old storeroom I'd never been in; up a short flight of concrete stairs and into a dusty room with a tall bookshelf taking most of the space. Broken test tube holders, deflated sports balls, one or two broken textbooks with large chunks missing. I picked up an open one with a logic problem diagrammed on the open page, _exercises in probability and—_

"Come on." She crept behind it. "See?" There was a small wooden stepladder, hidden by the shelving; it was dusty as the rest of the room though there were marks of footsteps over it. I looked up. The ceiling had a trapdoor you didn't see beyond the shelf, blending into the ceiling, fastened with two small hinges. Bodhi stepped up and pushed.

I followed her up and out. Through the roof, then out below the sky— There was a skylight window, raised above the classroom below; a structure and a place to sit where nobody walking below could notice, even if they bothered to look up.

"You like it, don't you?" Bodhi perched on the edge of the roof, standing easily on the sloping tiles, looking down at the people wandering between classes. Her loose sweater blew in the wind. "People are like those plastic bubble things you see in shopping malls and arcades, the ones with cowboys or space rangers or pocket monsters inside. You put in the right coins and what you want comes out. Or when you can't be bothered you smash it open with a claw hammer. It's all about knowing the right way to open someone up. People can be so fucking stupid."

I stepped across. Light drops of rain glimmered in the grass below; the air was chilly and clouds whirled above us. The edge's fall was eight feet or so: not a drop that would hurt you too much, if you had the use of your limbs. I saw the gym's roof across the way—though there was a gap further than most could jump.

"This has something to do with trapping Jenessa, doesn't it?" I said.

"Little bit." Bodhi ran a hand through her hair and turned back. "I come up here when I want everyone to stop bothering me in my head. Sometimes I bring guys up here. Then I go straight back down because I get bored."

"I don't want you to do anything else to her." Nobody down there would look up and back; and sometimes even being still was enough to turn you behind notice.

"Jen's smart and funny and a major gearhead." Bodhi smiled, running her tongue between her teeth. "Hanging with her is more fun than bullying her. She got what she wanted."

I watched her: she was restless often, her wind-blown sleeves rustling like leaves. Perhaps more of a greyed-out tone lingered in the landscape than usual. "What you did to her was terrible and I'd hate you ever after."

"Maybe she's a touch more forgiving than you, Swan. Maybe she's just a better person than you. But how's this?" Bodhi took a single step forward. Her tawny, feline eyes blazed a dark gold and her voice grew strangely softer. "You have to know it's not like Jen actually _likes_ you, you know. She only hangs with you in class because you're not as retarded as Rafe and Julia. She thinks you're a paranoid selfish nut who's only better than nothing.

"That make you angry?"

I turned it over in my head and felt nothing. "No. Leave her alone."

She changed direction, walking across the roof tiles with a sway of her hips. "I'll find what makes you angry. I'll find what makes you frightened, boy. I'll find what makes you dance and sing like a parrot. It's how a human shows what he truly is."

_You have nothing to offer me and it's your brother who frightens without even effort_, I thought, and said it aloud.

"Fucking Jon. Doesn't get what's my turf and what's not. What did he do to you when he had you all to himself?"

_...asked a few questions._

"What are you, and does it involve fangs?" I walked back and sat in the skylight's shadow. It was a good place if left undisturbed: and there were things that mattered to me other than her. I arranged books.

"I'll tell you," Bodhi said, standing over me and blocking the cloud-concealed sun from my sight. "I'll tell you, and nobody will ever believe you, because everyone knows you're crazy.

"You know that story about how in every generation there is a chosen one, a teenage girl, and she alone has the skill to stand against the vampires and agents of darkness who brutally kill humans and drink their blood?"

"Not really."

"Well, the part about the vampires is true."

Then I saw her shape blur and disappear in white. She was too fast to see, fast enough that anyone who looked up at the motion would see only a pale shimmer in the air. Something heavy skittered over across the gym roof and shook the tiles, then flew further—racing and bounding and slipping far away. Nothing here that could have chosen to stop it. I felt my mouth hang open and my hand above the book felt numb.

_She's boring and frightened of blood. I don't care._

_She's a mosquito, not a fly, irrelevant, irritating._

_Petty obnoxious inane braggart bad-tempered school bully—_

"Shut that, flies will buzz in." Bodhi pulled herself up above the trapdoor again. She did not sit down but crouched on her haunches, facing me, and slammed her right hand on the wall beside my head like a bar to a cage. She didn't pant or breathe. Black carven hair—white teeth and pale wan cheeks—a fierce painted mouth. Her perfume seemed to lie stronger in the air, or else it was her closeness: the sweet scent that some used to mask death.

I turned my head from her and closed my eyes. Darkness made it easier.

"Monty?" I asked. If not for the scent it would be impossible to tell someone was near: there was no warmth in her body and she used her breath only for words.

A sound, something like a laugh. "Monty Black's an arrogant little puppy in need of a good spanking.

"In other words," Bodhi spelled out, "I'm saying he's a werewolf. You're a pawn, Swan. Ass." I felt something, some shift in the air, edging close to my face; or it could have been the wind. I didn't open my eyes. She spoke one more time.

"Shouldn't you know better than to walk away alone with the monster?"

—


	24. Unknown Winged Things

"...and then she laid into me like I'd done something wrong. She went on all about feminism and girls not having to rely on men, stuff like that. Like I shouldn't have asked Maggie Fenton to the Sadie Hawkins dance!" Monty Black said, sitting on his bed, an old issue of _Playboy_ crammed behind his mattress. "Every time I try she pushes me away...but I'm not giving up yet. Mostly because Maggie is hotter than hell." For a moment I pictured Maggie's obstinate, bulldog-like face below her short red hair, blazing determination. "Hey, you think she'd give you a pity date? Then you could sorta...I don't know, give me a dance with her or two..."

"I've had one pity date offer and I didn't much like it," I said, leaning back along his wall below a framed certificate from a reservation course. There were photos of two older girls with him, of their mother and father, of Monty with his friends. Clothes, a few old sports trophies, and defunct fishing equipment covered the room set below the stairs; Monty kept his curtains closed and an orange-shaded light switched on. A battered guitar lay in a corner. "Besides, she's going with Val."

"Knew it," Monty said darkly. "But they're just friends, her and Val. They're not dating."

"I wouldn't know that—" I said.

"Just best friends," he repeated, scowling fiercely and jutting out his jaw darkly. "You think I've still got a chance with her? I started shaving ever since...you know, and next year I'm gonna be a sophomore when she's a senior, and then maybe she'll look twice..."

"Er, really wouldn't know."

"Well, the bloodsuckers want to _do you_ or something," Monty said.

"It's more like contemplating an insoluble problem, I think, for Bodhi. She says she can't read me." I tapped my head. I was alone, I had myself, stayed myself. "You know what it's like when you see a riddle and know there's an answer, but you're not there yet. If you see a line, if you build it you don't want it, if you buy it you don't use it, and if you use it you don't know you're using it. Or like a school question where the answer's there but it won't come straight... Sometimes things you don't know bother you. Sometimes you go away and they don't matter at all." Sometimes better not to know.

Monty had followed us up on the roof, then he and Bodhi yelled at each other. Rather informatively.

"That brother of hers wants something with you, and the leeches're patient frigid types. You're not going to dinner with them to find out. Or being the main course," Monty said. He flung a rubber band ball from one hand to the other, twisting and turning his wrists. "It's the smell, nuts. You don't smell of much to us, grass and steam and human, sweat and a bit of housecleaner...that sounds so gay. We can track people, but we don't hunger to eat them. Mostly."

Golden eyes meant a vampire who dieted—or a vampire who'd mastered the art of contact lenses. Black eyes meant a hunting, hungering vampire; pupils dilating. Red meant feasting on human blood. Or so I'd been told.

On the school roof I'd heard a faint whistling sound: Bodhi turning to face a third person so quickly that air flowed from her.

"You're not allowed to eat him, bitch," the male voice said: the one I'd asked for a favor. I saw nothing.

"Who said I was, puppy? And who let you off your leash?" I opened my eyes to see her pose confidently, one spiked heel forward.

"Treaty says no blabbing, bitch. Treaty says no playing with your food," Monty Black said; he stood his ground and advanced a step. He wasn't quite dressed for the weather, wearing a thin T-shirt and jeans; below the light shirt he was thickly muscled. "I could take you down now."

"Like hell you could, cur," she said, her mouth a dark slash in her greying face. "You couldn't even take me if you dared change here. Go lick your own balls and play dead."

"Go bite some roadkill, bitch. Matches your stink."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch. So when're you going to stop talking about your mom?" she said. She smiled as if she felt she'd scored a point, and swayed forward.

"You broke it first, dog. You and your little 'Oooh, giant wolves in the forest, help me!' thing." She mocked Anova's tale. "You and your pathetic little pranks. You and your scary stories. Didn't work to scare him off, did they? Is it because you secretly _liiiiike_ him, Monty-Monty?"

"Fuck you, leech! It's because of what you've done! You mess with humans and the pack mess with you."

Two rocks collided midstream, and the last place you should be was between them. If a fight broke out you were best to be already far away.

"I don't do it doggie-style. You don't want me to have friends, is that it? So every time I say hello like a good little human you growl and raise your hackles 'cause you want me to play fetch with you?" Bodhi paced toward him. "I can give you all the fight you want. Say the word and my family start putting down some dogs."

She threw her head back to the wind. Her expression was almost the same as when she'd flung the white blossoms away: almost as if she enjoyed herself.

_Pawn._

"You bloodsuckers are here on our allowance. You leave humans alone," Monty told her. They glared only at each other.

"Ooh, let's count, how many human lives have you saved lately, Montgomery?" She splayed the fingers of her right hand. "Let's see, I've rescued—one, lately; how about you? Too busy planting your nose in your crotch? What does that come to now?"

"You set it up for all I know! You just didn't want to go crazy over spilled blood, bitch."

"Oh, that's much more Ronnie's style than mine. So is it me you've got the wolfy fixation on, Monty?" Bodhi teased. "I like them older. And not stinking so much of wet dog. _And_ a lot...what—oh, was I going to say? Something important, something very important. Oh, yeah, I like them passing a height line." He scowled; all but snarled.

"You stink like a dead dog, crazy bitch! Go pick up a fistful of leeches and stick them—"

Bodhi swung around to face me, black smile dancing on her face. "Wait, who are you calling crazed? No, don't go anywhere—dear Monty thinks you know too much—what do you think we should do to silence him, Monty?" She repeated his name, swept nails that looked like claws through the air—and Monty stood in front of the trapdoor. There was always jumping off the roof—

"Nothing from you, bitch," Monty told her. "Fly off like the bat you are." Then he raised a finger and pointed to the clouds, where a blue space had begun to clear between the white. "Better be soon, or I won't have to cover your screwups any more."

She glanced up herself. "On your own head be it," she agreed—far faster than I'd have expected—and dove away like a greying shadow, fast beyond human eye. I lost her path after a slight rattle over the gym roof once more.

"And you—" Monty shook his head. "Nearly make her lose it. It's no good for any of us," he reproved.

"I know now you're doing a job." I stood; tried to stop myself from betraying signs of what I'd seen. "I try not to pay people back for favors unless I can't avoid it."

He let out a short, low laugh like a cough. "Maybe there might be something in you after all, Swan," Monty said.

He'd told me strange things since then: only a week since.

Out between the trees away from people and in cold afternoon light he'd shown me.

"...Werewolf? Is that metaphorical? The middle-school girl was strong, I saw her—strong and fast like Bodhi, but that's not literal shapeshifting, she didn't literally change shape into fog, Dracula and Carmilla in the books could shapeshift—" I asked.

"It's _awesome._"

It looked like fur burst out of thin air. I saw a large shape build in an instant's space of time. It was much larger than any human, slightly smaller than a car. A small elephant. More body mass than any human, certainly not the one who had stood there. The exploding fur built over limbs, muscle, long white teeth and eyes suddenly golden and shining like small suns. There had been a boy there a moment ago and now a creature exploded into his place. Its fur was dark and curly; a red tongue moved between clean, sharp teeth; claws glinted where the paws left marks on the grass and sunk into damp ground. Standing near to it intense warmth radiated from its body, and besides that the smell of dampened fur was rich and real. The red tongue licked its chops and the rows of teeth gnashed against each other.

...And like Anova I could have run screaming from the giant wolf.

"You've nearly made her lose control," Monty said, shifting back on his bed and watching the rubber band ball spin between human hands, smallish for his size but strong. "That'd cause a war. We'd get to run the filthy leeches out of town."

"Leech. That's sometimes used to mean doctor. Is it because of Jon Cullen—" I said.

"Dunno what he claimed to be the first time." Monty waved it away. "Something's brewing. The Cullens hunted through the graveyard that day, and afterwards we thought we smelt something that wasn't them—but they'd trampled too much. Maybe on purpose. Little May Jansen from the coffeeshop and her cousin Direxia ran out that way and couldn't remember why." He frowned, corners of his mouth drooping like a child's pout. "You ran away and couldn't remember why."

"They have enemies," I said.

"Yeah, so-called enemies who somehow know all about us. Who aren't showing their faces yet. Storm's coming." Chase had genuinely found the balaclava in the ocean, the possible connection to the amateur bomb: as if the one who'd discarded it had known throwing it in the sea would stop it being traced through smell. Or as if it were convenient. "Figure there's a use for someone the bloodsuckers can't read. Except you've still got a throat, so I'm not telling you all." Monty said. He got to his feet.

"Come on, stringbean, try stopping me from shooting hoops," he said.

"What, are you planning to take Bodhi on that way?" I said. A slight dark tinge came into his cheeks and he looked away.

"When I'm a sophomore...or when I can grind her into the ground with it. Let's go."

I'd changed in other ways; Erin, blushing, gathering her courage, had asked me to—the birdwatching club. The trees grew close to each other around the ridge, and though the skies were grey the canopy of leaves above seemed to hold in warmth. There were only five, not crowded enough to be irritating but enough to walk without fearing; and Chase among them. _Giant wolf_. Perhaps he would turn a lighter brown than Monty, from the colour of his braided hair— He was quiet and moved without a single sound as he led us across the ridge above a clear pond. Erin followed, light-footed as if she could not have left footmarks by trying. Then Misha, careful despite his size; and Val behind him, steady and calm. Five of us. I passed through.

"E-even near winter t-there are plenty to see," Erin said. "Last meeting Chase heard a Cooper's hawk nearby..."

"Down there." Val pointed quietly toward the pond to a tiny duck with a streak of vivid green on its head. "Green winged teal." It opened its beak and softly whistled. Misha made a painstaking entry in the notebook around his neck. Then there was another one on the water, duller-plumed around the same size; a third.

"It helps...c-conservation to note it down," Erin said. Her own notebook was a neat table of dates and sightings, all in her heart-dotted writing. "Have a l-look through the field glasses."

Sharp focus: mountains, ridges, dense trees, hiking tracks. I thought I saw leaves rustling and wondered what lay below that distant overgrowth. Something swooped in the corner of my sight. A goose, brown and speckled, flying above the treeline—

I passed the glasses back; Erin noted it down and the group walked on. Nothing like city sounds hid in the trees—running water, whistling, chirping, calling.

"Not tired?" Val looked back at me. "It can take time to get used to hiking. This isn't one of the steep trails."

"No." Watch how they walked, try to imitate it; don't make too many sounds on broken twigs. They all wore boots—even Erin, below a plain tartan skirt. The trees moved in the wind.

People camped here; people escaped here; other things hunted here. Chase raised his head as if he caught something nobody else could. He was bland-featured, prone to fading: not quite a male Helen Cullen, but... He wore the park rangers' logo on his shirt pocket; he worked part-time with them. His hair settled back into place behind the loose neck of his shirt.

Val offered an arm to help Erin over a thick, fallen log. It was covered in moss and small saplings grew above the dirt coating it. In Helen Cullen's words a colonnade over death... The air smelt of old leaves and cool water; the ground left dirt tracks on my trainers. All very real.

"It's all r-right. I can do it...but thank you," Erin chattered. She smiled carefully up at him. Reassurance, perhaps—I'd walked early into Ms Harper's class on Erin flushing strawberry red, hiding behind her hair, and using all her bravery for the trivia of asking Val Cordoba to the dance. He'd turned her down. A single beam of sunlight glinted off the back of his brown neck.

Misha walked near to me; he stared at a high-singing trio of yellow-brown birds in the trees. Then he looked across and slightly down. "You are in Ms Enn's Independent Living class, aren't you?" he demanded.

_Making conversation_, he might intend to call it if you could trust he knew words of that many syllables. "Yes."

He boisterously slapped his chest. "I was in it last semester. I got an A! I have to keep my grade point average up, so I can stay on the football team," he carefully explained. "Would you like to borrow my notes?"

"No. There's no need." I pushed aside a branch hung with thin light leaves. "How does she make people like her?"

"She doesn't act mean," Misha said unhelpfully. "Watch up there. That is where finches nest. Don't stare too long, or you will bother them."

Chase stepped up the ridge. "Elk came this way." He pointed to nibbled leaves. "Long gone, though. Be careful if you hear large creatures. But most won't attack humans, especially in company." He kept his voice low and even.

"She's like Bodhi, then," I said.

Misha solemnly shook his head. "No, Bodhi _is_ mean. She is pretty, but she is mean."

"A l-little," Erin chimed in from Misha's other side, then raised a hand to cover her mouth. "Actually...part of the club privileges are because of her, in a w-way. Or _them_. So she is to blame for some n-nice things... When the Cullens take days off to hunt and hike and say that they're s-studying nature, the club can go early on every second Friday. It helps, especially in winter. And if we have five members, we can get school funding..." Erin flushed as if she felt guilty for conspiring. "Chase's petrol...and new field glasses...there's this catalogue..."

"Mrs Cullen gives to the school," Misha said firmly. "She is a nice lady."

Chase turned back. His face and voice seemed carefully neutral. "Helen and Jon can well afford to donate. Let's not chatter here."

On the brink of another ridge Erin looked across. "Chase, is t-that—over there, where the trees are dense—" She waited. We heard a bird's high call. "Is t-that...her?" She raised her head to the sky, face alight and exulted, as if she longed for a set of wings to spiral into the air herself and join the birds. "The hawk—"

Like a flying cross it rose into a zephyr on the wind.

—


	25. Alluring Aversion Alora

_Oh, so I take it the Cullen girl rescued you. Hardly a net benefit to the world._

I still froze up when she laid a hand on my arm.

"I'm asking you not to do that."

"Very defiant. I keep cautioning you against that. You're a slow learner."

I saw her clearly: lines of her bones below her face, a long arm, a red-and-purple shirt with three lines of dull ribbon. I couldn't escape it or distort it.

_The ways you can punish me are limited. The time I have with you is limited. Saying it aloud would ruin it._

_Stranger things and you don't know the least of them._

"What do you want to know? I'm clear-headed enough." Slug-slow and resenting it. "Don't touch me." This time there wasn't a well to draw on, dazzling, dappled shapes in the air. But she lifted her hand, as if before it had been the same few seconds and my mind deluding me.

Her walls were dull. Her books and papers smelt flyblown and yellowing. Her smoke lingered in the air. No trick of perception softened the angles of her furniture; no pictures sprung from the air.

"What's the latest distraction you feel spares you from making an effort in these sessions?" She flicked open her green glass lighter.

"Must be the medication variant." _You still have power over me. _"I'll talk with him about it."

You couldn't say, _I'm frightened it's eaten me away and I don't know it._ I wouldn't take anything at night: I should have felt the walls moving into a small box, but the room remained where it was. As most real things.

"You have an interesting collection of aversions," she said coldly. As if she nourished a sense of righteous indignation against me. "People. Touch. Inability to cleanse yourself. Children."

"Interesting? Not at all." I drew my knees up on the chair, locking myself in. "I survive. With them. Intact."

"Your mother was right. Probably for the wrong reasons. Stay away from people," she said. "You haven't been spending time with Jenessa out of class, have you?"

She had friends; I barely knew their names. Bodhi didn't count. "No." Close to the truth.

"Much more sensible. If I hear again you're a threat to anyone..." She glared. I thought she meant it; not just playing a game. I couldn't start to understand why; tired and greying and disgustingly slow. "You can go now."

I wound up in the cafeteria again. Keep Jenessa safe from Bodhi; if that wasn't needed I'd go alone. I couldn't see either of them and turned away.

An icy cold hand reached up to grab mine.

"Hello," Alora Cullen said as I wrenched away. "Don't squawk so loudly, or people will think I'm hurting you. Come and sit down."

"I should escape." People stared already. "I'm not supposed to...and I don't..." I glanced behind and saw the bearded one. He'd crept up as if he'd hunted. I found myself taking a step in Alora's direction.

That was the problem. The likes of Erin—sitting between Imogen and Misha over by the mashed potatoes—were sheltered in ways I wasn't. Some threats you knew to walk away from. Two golden-eyed vampires behind and before failed to raise the same kind of fear.

"We'll help you," Alora said, "tell you answers. I'll be sad if you don't come. You want to be nice, don't you? It's much easier to be nice than mean."

"—Answers. I ought to want answers."

Her head barely cleared the table when she sat up. She pushed a carton of strawberry-flavored milk toward me; I took nothing. An overstuffed notebook lay on the bench near her right. Black-and-white photocopies of dress designs fluttered out, the lower half of a dress like a flower and a section of long flowing sleeve. Her handwriting looped generously in a purple shade of ink, like a child's attempt at copperplate; she dotted her i's without ornament. Upside down I read _sateen, ribbing, chiffon, sloper_.

Her friend Killigan sat on my other side.

_I'd yell out what I think you are and they'd come to take me away._

"Some people do horrid things to you if they think you're mad," Alora said, pouting. "But I just want people to be happy. You can smile for once, can't you? Don't you want to be happy? Just turning your frown upside down by itself can make you feel happy, because of endorphins and things like that in your blood. And it takes twenty muscles to make a frown, but only three to make a smile."

"I don't think it does. I think that's a myth." I looked down at my hands; my fingers twitched, slightly weathered and nail-bitten.

"_I _like to be happy. Killigan's good at making me feel happy," Alora said, surprisingly definite about it. "How are you feeling? Do you like strawberry milk? I like the color. No—" She tilted her head to the side. "I can see, I think, that you're not going to drink it. But it's fuzzy."

It was sealed, but I could imagine a needle in the carton—or the equivalent of a pomegranate from the underworld.

"You're not an easy person," she said.

"You're wasting time. What answers?" I fiddled with my hands, drew out a pen and turned it over. I felt drained; half eager to run from them and half only bored. I hated being made to feel things; I needed the pills to stop. "Your hands were cold," I said, reminding myself of an unreality.

"I forgot to put on my mittens." She drew pink-colored gloves from a string around her neck; they'd been hand-stitched in jagged mountain-like patterns of a darker pink. "Do you like them? How do you feel, Xavier Swan?"

"Mind your own business." I pulled up a sheet of paper. "Would this be better? Worried about eavesdropping?"

"Well, actually we just wanted to try a few little things on you because Jon said so," Alora said. She reached in her lacy shoulderbag and displayed a set of painted pasteboard cards; perhaps tarot, a set of dancing figures in bright, frilly clothing and candy stripes. "A promise of answers was only a lure. We do that. Are you sure you can't smile even once?" She flicked open her cards and laid them out like a game of solitaire, and giggled. Killigan glared at me as if he was badly constipated. "I feel so happy!" she added. "The happiest I've been in a whole two weeks, at _least_. Sitting here with an old friend and a new friend—so happy! I want to hug everyone!" White teeth flashed in her face. I shoved the chair away and backed into the next wall. Then she shook her head; I saw her companion raise his glare. "There, there. I didn't mean to scare you."

I heard laughter from the muscular blonde girl at the table ahead; a strange grin from the boy next to her. Some turned their heads and stared because of the noise I'd made—and all smiled cheerfully. I thought madly that there was nobody left who wasn't grinning wild and sharp as dogs' pointed teeth—

A piece of paper.

_What are the treaty limits to you? You can answer _this_ without overhearing_, I passed to her.

"You don't need to answer him," Killigan said; voice rough and low like syrup over pebbles.

"But I want to." Alora smiled. "It's anyone who comes from here, who little Monty's friends say lives here, and anyone who passes through, and it's where it used to be." Her voice sang it. She said it as if she knew exactly what I meant.

"Little Monty? Is he less little than you?" I asked. She pouted and tossed her pigtails.

"Don't ask a lady her age, silly! I'm only sixteen this year. Just about!"

I stole a blank page from her book, leaning over the girl. _What about strange gifts? Bodhi..._ I wrote.

_She's a mindreader, fucking leech_, Monty said. _Let it slip because she's so bloody cocky. Alora thinks she can tell fortunes. The rest are close-mouthed. Chances are Jon's got something for he's in charge of the lot..._

Alora dealt herself a solitaire rematch. Her friend rested his thick elbows on the table.

"You feel angry or sad if she didn't feel like answering?" Killigan said. A British accent or Scots rather than southern like Alora's.

"Too bad apathy isn't an option." They'd told some things—let some things go—I felt nothing. Nothing like the fear driving me running to that tree. He shook his head. Alora spoke up again in her small, high voice.

"Then I don't like to let people go," she said, "but I leave it to Bodhi to be popular. Sometimes it's hard for me to be careful, and it's hard for Killigan too. You'll be safe as long as you stay away. Or as long as you stay in the boundaries. Actually...I don't find it easy to tell. It's going to get worse." She blinked her yellow eyes. "Have some nice pink desserts and watch some films with happy endings while you can. It's good for you."

"You should go," Killigan said, possibly growled.

Perhaps that was better. If Ms Enn troubled to find out. If I couldn't find out more, yet. The girl thought she knew what would happen.

Nobody believed Cassandra.

A map of old Quileute territory. Suggestions for how and why. Senescence. Laws of mass and energy. Possibly dust.

_Stop making excuses and _think_ it through._

_Did you tell Imogen that story about Rhoda Jansen? _I'd asked Jenessa—before realising that the time was wrong; neither two hundred years ago nor at all near the time the Cullens had returned. _It was interesting._

NAH. GO ASK HER NICELY, she'd answered.

Vampire shapeshifters into fog. Or blurs from speed alone.

Imogen brushed still-lank hair back from her face impatiently with her left hand, her right wrist loosely bandaged. "I _said_ it was a Hallowe'en edition and the source was a Jansen, what more journalistic integrity do you want? It was a good story—oh, yeah, you're still a bit new here and you _still_ haven't gotten too much of a clue. Basic tip here: if it's a Jansen story, you check the secondary sources. Simple enough for you?" She sat back on the steps above me, outside a classroom.

"Hey." Imogen flipped to a new page in the notebook around her neck and started to spill thick ink over it, clumsy with her wrong hand: one point here and another point there, sharp lines between. I recognized it. She dipped her fingers in a dismembered pen and drew two thick lines that took a sudden veer. "I changed direction. Nothing on the road said why. Although when I looked again the ice was all melted and people had stepped everywhere, over most of the tracks. It's like there was some kind of guardian angel.

"A couple of people place Bodhi in different places when she started—Rick says one thing, Cady another, all the usual eyewitness stuff. Over there, it's like she'd be Wally West in high heels," Imogen said. "The superhero, duh? Heh, they'll say I'm mad too. Seung Ji was pretty nice about it even though it was her car I smashed—she kind of blames it all on careless men who don't look both ways. Erin and Misha are all worried about me. But you won't be."

She was right and knew it.

"You can't trust your mind and your memory. Not even if people say you're sane. So what do you remember?" she asked, but she left no chance to answer. "I'm like, major-league grounded forever." She slumped her chin against her left hand, creasing her skin like the red jacket around her shoulders. "No driving, no afterschool stuff, no detective field trip to Los Angeles. And I convinced Jen to hack into her biodad's email to set up an interview appointment. Never mind that. 'Course, I know I deserve it—I should've put on snow chains, I should've stayed home, I should've asked Dad to drive, should've driven better. I said I was sorry for nearly running you down."

Being sorry for carelessness did not stop it from harm.

"Like you said, I don't care about your inner turmoil." She looked for answers. "Have you chatted to Bodhi lately?"

She scowled. "Why d' you want to know?"

"Does she keep changing stories?"

Imogen leaned back, lowering her hand on the stairs. "Oh, plenty! Usual Bodhi. Making herself rescue me from the van totally going up in flames with the engine exploding. Making you cry at her feet in gratitude. Anything that makes a van into an exploding doomsday device and her into an angel with a flaming sword. Or whatever. I swerved like someone was looking out for me, or you, but who'd w—wait, not remotely what I meant. I've gotta figure why."

"Your mother's still protecting you," I suggested; that supernatural concept was one among several that came to my mind. Another buzzing question—_ghosts, ogres, chupacabra, leviathan—_ Imogen narrowed her eyes.

"Disgusting," she said, and scrambled to her feet. She blazed again. "You don't get why you shouldn't _use_ stuff like that, do you? You don't get some prize for not caring about anything, I've seen Leon and all that walk up on you and you barely retaliate, but it's not because you're nice. Sometimes I can't read you at all and I can read 'most everyone else, so that suggests—

"I've got that Bodhi told her friends to try and patch things up with you lately," she attacked. "Half a cookie for her I guess—but you try to put people off no matter what. I guess it's understandable for acting like a person. You're weird, and you're new, and things started happening after you got here—I— And another thing I know. Trisha at the grocery store gossips you get mostly cheap ramen—so if your father's giving you food money, what're you doing with the rest of it? Yeah. You're not as hidden as you'd like to think.

"You hate me for noticing things?" she asked. Imogen whirled down the stairs, steadying herself with the back of her left hand. She seemed to think not.

"Sorry." She spun back to throw a few last words at me. "Mouth works faster than brain. I'm kind of stressed lately. I've gotta go and get a ride with Misha—it's not just an excuse to get away from awkward conversations. My dad tried to raise me right, really. You can tell me without caring if I'm acting crazy or not—or would it be better to get an appointment or two with the school shrink?"

"No and _no_. I hope you're done talking."

"Mostly." Her friend Misha, easily recognizable at a distance, called her as if she hadn't lied. And Imogen ran across to join him.

I still had to wander away from Gordon's house while the daylight lasted; I kept by the roads.

_Mother._

_I can see grey fog in the distance again, like a small cloud of dust rising up._

_—_


	26. Remembrances

A/N: Warnings for questionable content, wangsting, and falsehoods about sexual violence; acknowledgement of quotes from Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

_—_

_She had bad days and good days._

Sometimes I had to take care of my mother, but she looked after a child when I was too young to help with anything.

I remember a cold day even for that place and time of year; not a good one. Juli smoking in the front, a landlord, someone she'd got to let us stay. I still moved past people as if I faded with the background, and in memory that made me happy.

She was sitting up, carefully dressed; no longer needing rest and speaking soft and incoherent as if she was dreaming. It was a corner of a mattress in the lodging she'd found; better than a shelter. I sat beside her.

"I didn't find anything, not today. But you need to eat something." There'd been samples in a market. I emptied my pockets.

And she wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and sitting next to her felt as if everything was going to be okay. I was cold and she was warm. "You spend too much time out there alone. Did anyone try to catch you?"

"No." I wasn't good at shoplifting; small thefts were likelier. A wrapped Mars Bar. She split it in two.

_I have hands and legs and I'm tall. I have to find something._

You could find something if you were lucky. A body, a runner or carrier or lookout—anything for food and shelter for the next day. Almost anything.

"That's good," my mother said, and she recited the rest like a song we'd both long known. "Don't let anyone notice. Don't let anyone come close. Or they'll come and find us. They'll take you away and pry open my mind. I discovered too much, back then. They wanted to hunt me." She'd let her voice grow fierce and low and make me promise—that was better than when she went away behind her eyes. "Promise me you'll stay away from them."

I didn't talk unless I had to. But I'd worked, even for months at a time. It was easy to keep focus then, because she was there. Things stabbed through my head sometimes, and I feared I wouldn't be strong enough— No. I never had to tell her, though she would have protected me.

"I'm your mother. I should protect you," she said, warm next to me. "You're not on anything. You're not drinking your life away or worse." I shook my head. "That's enough. I wanted to be a good mother."

I remember she'd repeat herself in those days. Staying clean. Staying away from people. I gave my promises.

"Don't worry. Juli's letting us stay. The rent is fine," she said. She was always the one who talked to people; she'd smile and speak smoothly and they liked her. "Have you been studying?"

_I'll find something, of course I'll find something. Some soup kitchens let you stir pots or wash up in the back, and it helped if you spoke like them but not too much, there's one fourth on redsign street by the dark brick church..._

"Yes."

_She always came back, I hoped she always would until the last—-_

_I was with her and that made everything all right._

Her hair was loose like small feathers, shifting across my face where we sat close together. She moved restlessly to braid it; sometimes I helped her. I knew she had migraines and I couldn't help her through it but to clean her forehead.

But I couldn't have been eaten with worry then.

I saw things. Sometimes I had headaches but they never stopped me doing what I had to do, and if I wondered if I'd lose the strength I needed.

"We're leaving soon," my mother said, and her voice sounded happy. She had a plan; something new, and I was happy when I saw vivid animation spring to her eyes again— "It's almost spring. Let's go somewhere warm. Fruit-picking work in the sun. Where they won't ask for papers or numbers. Imagine fields full of fresh fruit, California again—you'd like that, wouldn't you? Sooner or later we have to leave or they will take you away from me, and it should be somewhere warm. You're too cold." Her hand wrapped itself around mine, her arm over my shoulders.

"I'd like that," I said.

_And that was _all _much easier, because she was still there._

"No. That made me happy," I said aloud. "She didn't want them to catch us up—and they did separate us in the end. It's not one single melodramatic story, it's never trying to attract attention or let anyone know us closely—"

I still remember. Words rhyme to me but memories I can forget or let change, especially younger. You close doors and open them and don't let the stormwater flow too far in the gutters. I remember another child, once, another child, playing with a striped plastic ball in a sandpit with spades, then my mother pulled me away because people would come after us, but it wasn't the gaudy thing the woman sitting in front of me sought and so would let me keep it inside myself...

Then the cut came again, prying into blood.

"Oh, there was a time I nearly bit a boy's ear off," I said. "Dangerous. Troubling. Better kept away from nice, sane people. I have been known to bite.

"There was this public playground. A bigger boy—slightly bigger—decided he wanted to join in. He had things to play with already, a truck, a robot, but he was curious. So then he hit me on the head. Then—it feels like a red mist if I let myself get too angry—I lost control and grabbed on and bit. Then I remember blood everywhere and in my mouth and people screaming. I spat out something on the ground. I had scratches on my face, over my arms, and his shirt was red and over all red.

"My mother took me away quickly and I think we left that city then."

_You can't be with people..._

It came to me to wonder about two halves of a similar coin, but there was no time. I couldn't be the same as others. You could color things differently.

"I shouldn't do that, because it attracts attention."

"You're trying to tell me you're a monster," Ms Enn said. The light brown skin of her face was stretched taut across her cheeks. "You're frightened of touching other children. That's sickening."

She paused and leaned forward. "You've done more than childish crap already, haven't you? Disgusting."

_Oh, and that's one for swirling red rage, drowning inside my head—I can't hit her because that is worse—_ I stopped. I didn't want to hear this from her; waiting; and then—

"I don't touch anyone, I haven't, you're wrong—_that's_ wrong, I'm not."

_It bothers me. They're innocent, others are innocent, I know I'm not like them, I'm grown._

"Sex, sin and scandal," the grey voice cut across, only a collection of cliches, she didn't know or understand at all. "Don't the statistics say that your kind comes out of other people's sins?

"Was it your mother's crimes or someone else's?" she fired again, and of course she knew that was a weak point—

_She never hurt me, I'll prove it, always protected me—_

"Nobody _normal_ is afraid of being touched. You're seriously messed up around sex." The knife wrenched at another strip of skin.

_If you take things from them then you become their creature_, words spun, _and there is a choice to say I won't, but you never took—_

_And thy damnation slumbers not_, words painted vermilion in the story, Tess excoriated, but I don't believe that, or I should because it is true.

She touched my hand again. It would always be only that; I disgusted her; she knew about her rules; I needed to stop her. Streaks of grey swam in the air.

_—DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T ACCUSE MY MOTHER—_

"Yes," I said.

_...and your mother can live quite comfortably; and a school, and I am a friend;_ only in a book...

"Scandal? I was younger. I've been to other schools," I began. I saw her lean avidly forward, though the hand did not lift from my wrist.

_Dreaded; winced; surrendered; despised; left_, echoed parts of an elegant paragraph.

"I've been hit. Bullied. It happens if you don't do well enough at staying out of their way. You're weak if you don't know how to ignore that."

I can stay out of the way if I choose; it's only here that everyone stares at me and knows what I am. She wanted this.

"Yes, yes, Coach Kagin would say it's part of male sociocommunication," Ms Enn said.

"And once a group of them went further than hitting. I don't like being touched."

_...He was very kind to me, and to mother_, words in ink explained.

Something glinted in her light eyes. I added smears of faces; hands pushing me down and skin on skin. People ought to hate that.

"They thought I was...less than others. Poorly made."

_Are you some kind of faggot?_

"Leaning toward men."

_You need not work in fields; be clothed; take favour and be owned._

Ms Enn's mouth twisted into almost a smile; she didn't openly demand this; the nails slid over my arm.

I don't care about school bullies. I've never cared. They can do nothing.

I added details I remembered; faces I knew had shoved me to the ground but only that in truth. Touches. She often knew lies when she heard them.

"A story. A reason for the sensory defensiveness."

"I don't like being touched," I repeated. My voice quivered upward. "Or perhaps I worry I enjoyed it too much!"

"Poor boy," Ms Enn said sweetly, and patted the back of my hand. "You want me to read some selections from Leviticus?"

_...there has never been a point to memories, not the good or the bad—stop touching me—_

"That's not necessary. But you won't tell anyone else, you're supposed to keep secrets..."

"Oh, I am." She jerked away from me, stopping touching finally. I collapsed forward—dust on the ground and small hollows on the floor, _don't look at her stop it make it all stop._ "You stay away. I won't hear that you've gone off and harmed someone else."

_Crazy man, crazy man; you gave away half of all that you are._

_Let me alone let me alone only leave me there._

And so I walked up to the place that it was promised others left alone. The trapdoor closed easily. The grey sky was studded with odd parts of blue, like broken pieces of a watery eggshell. Over the rooftops were no shadows of people in view; not even sounds of walking and shouting below. It was rare to be alone under a sky.

I smelt smoke, heavy below the thick warm sweetish smell of cloves. Clove cigarettes.

"It's only _you_. Stay if you want."

Bodhi smoked in the skylight's shadow, holding the cigarette to her mouth. It flamed and smoked away from her pale fingertips.

"It's not like I can read you. You got a death wish?"

If Bodhi pries off your skin, then at least she tears it off in a single rip like an old bandaid.

"I hate this place. I hate this school. I hate everyone down their and their fucking petty minds going off every single second of every single day," I heard her say.

There was an old joke about that. I ran through its words piece by piece.

_This school is so unjust._

_Why?_

_They sent me home because the girl next to me was smoking._

_That is unjust. They sent you home because the girl next to you was smoking?_

_I was the one who set her alight. Because she was a vampire._

_Ha, ha._

"I can't. Wish that. Because I am all my mother has." I sank next to the roof's edge.

"You've done a _brilliant_ job of avoiding death so far," Bodhi hissed. The waves of her smoke still hung in the air behind my back. "So much for fuss over protecting Jen, dumbass. If she believed what you told her, we'd have to kill her. And if not us then others would descend upon this town and salt its ashes in vengeance."

A gust of fresh wind blew across the rooftop. "What others? Elves, gorgons, mermaids, sirens, aliens, face-stealers?"

_I don't want anything to happen to Jenessa. I can't allow it._

Then below that lay:

_Of course she knows what I've said, she breaks open other people's skulls and devours their contents. Except mine._ A few choice epithets for that swept to the surface where she couldn't see; then all the worries I didn't want...

I'd had to watch Bodhi show off the innards of her car, a squat bulky black dented thing like a giant half-squashed beetle, parts inside newer-looking than the outside. She called it the Cockroach. She'd cracked open her hood for Jenessa to see and made her hands greasy messing between all the metal gears—

"Don't be fucking ridiculous, what are you, five? Yeah, there're pretty little elves and they all fly around on fucking butterfly wings, that's what'll kill humans who get too uppity," she said. "There's us. In five years little Monty might be strong enough to give a good fight. Then there are others more numerous who drink human blood in plenty.

"Better disabuse Jen of any traces of your sanity or I'll have to kill you both. There are bloodless ways to do it that don't break treaty."

The roof creaked as if she crossed the way. The world still jangled around me; the wrong colors; I rested my head on my knees. Nothing should come too close.

"If I told Ms Enn, would you have to kill her?"

"I guess—wait."

And then Bodhi laughed, black ripples in the air.

"So soon and you already want me to kill? On the other hand, I'm not your fucking errand girl."

I saw her put out the cigarette on the concrete; prepare a fresh one, the lighter glinting like crystal glass in daylight; she sat down beside me with a complacent smile in her dark mouth.

"Never mind. You've interfered enough with me and it's never gone well."

"Ms Enn, huh? I wonder why. I sorta remember when she came, but I don't do classes with retards. Most people think she's wonderful and a couple think she's pure poison. I guess that makes her a little bit _interesting_." Bodhi's eyes widened, gold-colored. "Want me to read her mind and get to know all her blackmailable secrets?"

"No. Don't bother."

"You went straight to killing. And you think I'm the bad one. _So_ wrong." Bodhi giggled again. "Jen was probably right about you. Except humans like you aren't so interesting—always _Mommy didn't love me, so I'll go out and kill someone, of course I can never be caught despite being a total loser every other way_, and be so terribly shocked once they find there's a bigger shark in the waters. They're always boring."

She'd reminded me. "You're only using her. Don't do that."

"Or what, or the lady herself'll tell you off for intervening in her social calendar?" She'd dropped back into an older mode of speech. "We talk and think about engines and grease—and sometimes your many personal failings. And mine, of course. She's way more interesting than you when you sit there and glare impotently. So, come over to my place sometime?"

That changed it again. "What, for dinner? No." I saw her fidget: she picked up a piece of rock with her left hand, still holding the cigarette with her right, and ground it into dust between her fingers. "That's dramatic."

Fragments of dust swirled down; like a hundred little bugs swarming for attention, like pale dust and fog rising into a column in the air in place of falling.

"Stop me?" she suggested.

Then I remembered to reach down into my bag.

"Oh. Idiot." She tossed the bulb of garlic back and forth between her hands, then slit it open with a fingernail. "Just smells awful." I watched her throw the halves back down. She wiped her hands over her cigarette—the part that wasn't burning. "This one's going rotten. You smell more strongly than it. Give it up."

"Monty says fire," I fished.

"Look at this." She placed a fingertip on the burning tip of her clove smoke, letting it stay for a few seconds, and withdrew it with no trace of a mark below the brown ash. The heavy smell of it pulsed in the air. "Count on making yourself the first bonfire, boy."

_Interested enough to answer. Since she does not reveal herself to all of humanity weaknesses must exist._

"There are cross shapes everywhere in architecture, so I take it that doesn't work either," I said. "Crucifixes? Silver? Do you feel any compulsions to count grains of rice? Or blobs of pudding? Two equilateral triangles superimposed on each other, one up and the other down? Blood from dead people?"

Couldn't practically test that last one. But surely her brother, in a surgeon's work...

"Stupid symbols. Do I look obsessive-compulsive to you? You're the crazy one. You tell me."

I'd thought of it. "If you ran away because the sun was coming out, that seems like it might mean something, but you go outside a lot without any troubles, so I don't understand—"

"Oh, fuck, it'd be _awesome_ if we burst into flames just for showing our faces in daylight, I'd throw that fucking cow my brother married out of a plate glass window and watch her explode—but no. Humankind cannot slay us. Stakes break against our skin and we can..._survive_ in the sun." Bodhi grimaced slightly.

"And eat off deer?"

"The cow likes deer. I like other predators—carnivores taste most like humans.

"Alora prefers bunny rabbits and squirrels," she added, with a good deal of contempt. Then her eyes shifted back to me, and she seemed to bare her teeth in her expression. "You're lucky that we were the first to taste your scent. Those who drink blood aren't known for their restraint.

"Then again, there are few of our kind in America," she said. "You see, the cow my brother married has made us diet for a while. And I get so very bored."

And then Bodhi smiled again, hunger written in a pale inhuman face.

_She didn't eat me. That's alarmingly positive when she thinks Gordon's surname is spelt 'pawn'._ I took out a key to the front door of the house; Gordon's cruiser was gone. I saw a glint of metal from a bicycle frame, lying between leaves closer to the neighbor's house. Above the stair the door was unlocked.

_He forgot. Or if not, there's nothing much I can do._ I closed the door and heard a noise from above the stairs; and then thought of the steak knives in the drawer.

_No. Don't give them ideas._

Upstairs; the room I used; too light, not Gordon's step, not pure imagination—

"Oh, it's you!" said the girl's voice: more shocked and less contemptuous than Bodhi's exclamation. It rallied upwards. "Oh, well, crap." Imogen Winthrop put a hand to her chin. "Um. Dropped by to bring some cookies? The door was open—um, and there are only so many places people keep their spare keys—and, um—"

"You'd make a wonderful housebreaker."

"—Really? You know about that sort of stuff? I mean—and _something_ freaky happened to my car, and somehow you got people apologising to you and Bodhi doing an about-face, and—uh, I do kind of know your dad even if he sometimes calls me a public nuisance?" Imogen suggested, waving a paper bag that smelt of flour in the air. She backed away from me.

I sat down on the bed. There was only a thin bandage around her wrist now and she looked more well than the last time; she reddened slightly across the bridge of her nose, between fading freckles for the season. She'd looked at papers on the desk, titles of books, bed and drawers and space heater in the corner.

_Nobody can read me. It's only things._

I spoke to the air behind her left ear. "But I don't want to go among mad people, Alice said. Oh, you can't help that, because we're all mad here. But how do you know I'm mad? One must be, or one would never have come here. And how do you know that you're mad? Largely if enough people tell you that you're mad..."

Imogen shrugged. "Hey, is it true you spent three months in a psych ward before you came here? Was it for anything, like, out of the ordinary?"

_None of your business._

"Sure. Haven't you got anywhere better to go?"

Imogen looked back at the painted walls. "It's been like months and there's not much personal about this place. No decs, no photos, no posters, like you're camping instead of staying. You're less neat than Erin but more minimalist. Marks on the ceiling say long ago someone hung up a lot of those fluoro stars that glow in the dark—I used to have 'em."

People lie. She looked human—no superhuman feats—ink over her hands, a smudge by her left ear, a soft reddened mark on her chin where something like a helmet's strap had pressed into her skin, not like Bodhi or Veronica.

I looked at her, thinking: _I don't care what happens to you. If they eat you for your prying I'll feel nothing._ Once she offered me a hand to stand up.

"You've got strong wrists," she said suddenly, changing directions. "Thick. Like your father's. You're probably good at opening jars and, um, stuff." I said nothing and she looked back at the books. "But personality-free decor or not you can get a lot of someone out of what they like," she said with determined reasoning. "Textbooks—a bio book not on the syllabus from the eighties, like that's current—Walt Whitman—Bleak House—pop-science on HeLa cells—"

Cells can live longer than people. I'd been lucky to find some books.

"—and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, although we did that in English class _last_ year," she said. "I thought it was incredibly boring, too many words wasted when a few well-placed news articles and statistics could've done the job on women in the nineteenth century, condition of. Then it's all this happens, and then that happens, and the pain goes on and on, and Tess just keeps on being trodden into the mire over and over because she's got less spine than Erin when you ask her to make you cookies or read off her homework. Should've called it Tess of the Depressing, if'n you ask me." She screwed up her face, wrinkling her nose.

"I liked the ending."

"She's executed for murder and because of the Deceased Wife's Sister Act her husband can't marry his sister-in-law, so _tragic_—wait, what?"

"Tess gets everything she wants, doesn't she?" I said. "She gets a day with the one she loves. And she has a happy ending with Alec Stoke, the one who had power over her. She gets to kill him."

Imogen didn't reply. We were both silent; then there was the sound of a car engine outside.

"—And you smell like you've taken up smoking," she added. "No, some kind of strong smoke—there're rumors about Hari and the Drama Club—it's not weed or drugs or anything like that, is it? Because you stink of whatever-it-is, heavy and spicy—"

"If it was you'd smell something oily and leafy and a bit like spoiled milk."

"Well, that's something! I can see how these circs'd be creepy if we reversed our positions here, only you wouldn't have something to find out and I _would_—if it's ordinary smoking, then I won't tell your dad if you don't?" Imogen blackmailed.

Bodhi's heavy smoke lingered in fabric.

"I'll change."

I only had to fist my hands on the edge of my shirt before she ran out, slamming the door behind her. I heard her call out on the stairs: "Bringing cookies— Yeah, he's just in there..."

She sipped from a glass of Coke in the front room and ate a pale cookie from a plate when I joined them; she talked.

"White chocolate and almond. Kind of dry, though." Sandy crumbs escaped from her fingers and Imogen made a face. "Remind me to fire my chef—Erin's a girl of many talents but none of them really in cooking. Same for me, though. But chocolate makes everything better." She directed a bright grin back at me, full of a warm fire.

"Sprain's fine?" Gordon said. "Good to hear that." He barely looked at me; and this was almost the most he'd talked for a week or more.

"Don't need to tell me I got off pretty light." She managed a greenish, martyred setting of her face.

"You're lucky you still have your license, young lady," he said. "Though I'm sure your father's not letting you use it."

"Very true, chief." She saluted. "Sorry...really."

"That's always the trouble with you," Gordon said; but she didn't take it seriously and that may have been what he meant.

"I'll give you good press next station barbecue for scoops," she said, and added a smile flying toward something like winsome and harmless behind her brown eyes. "How're things going in Los Angeles? —Journalists never reveal their sources but it wasn't him, though." She gestured back to me.

_Bodhi herself says she does not know; but..._

Gordon sighed, a bit too expressively. "You're a public nuisance. Come back when you're qualified, kid."

She talked lightly; laughed at a few of her own jokes; disguised herself as easily as anyone else. I listened to her and Gordon sharing the things around the town they knew.

"...Dad's chaperoning, so—maybe I don't have to play Cinderella at the ball," she said. "I asked Yoshi, before. He's fun. I don't know why people take high school dances and high school dating and all that so seriously. It's just high school. I'm going to spend half the time with Misha and Erin anyway.

"You going?" Imogen turned back again. "Maggie's probably going to ask—well, more like _recruit_—you to help decorate the hall—she thinks you're good with your hands." She managed a smile.

"No. Quiet evening in. But I know how to use a stepladder."

"Like you need one," Imogen said, poking out her tongue.

"If that's what you want," Gordon said slowly. "Probably a good thing to socialize more. With the others at the school."

"Good for everyone," Imogen said. "Getting out into the world—talking to people—singing like a canary—"

"What are you chasing after now?" Gordon asked her, the tone of it vaguely resigned.

"Guardian angels, I guess. This and that. Some Internet stuff, 'cause I'm very grounded. And the pranks around school—remember how I cleared your name, X?"

"This I didn't hear," Gordon said. Imogen raised her chin and tried to explain it, as if she was convinced it was a good idea, and I saw his face draw back into itself while he listened.

"I didn't find who really did it, though. They stopped," Imogen said. "Probably a freshman, from class schedules. Maybe I should've tried harder to find the crook, because some of them were malicious—not fun, like someone wanted to hurt Bodhi." She rubbed two fingers against her left cheek, tilting her head and looking away. "But at least they've stopped, and at least if it was one of those kids maybe they learned. Kids grow up."

It would have been wrong to do to a human woman.

"No. I never did hear the full story about that," he said. Imogen shifted uncomfortably, and spent a few careful seconds brushing crumbs from her shirt.

"Reporter's instinct. You winnow out bits of what's important, I guess," she said. "I figured Xavier couldn't be in two places at once...I mean, most people can't, you know?" And she gave me the same kind of look as for an interesting unsolved problem.

"I talked to Bodhi today. She was smoking," I said, since Imogen had started telling stories. Her eyes fluttered briefly and she stroked her cheek again.

"Underage? On school property?" Gordon shook his head. "I hope you don't follow that example."

"Oh, yeah, she does that, sometimes," Imogen said. "I _think_ it might be another entry in Bodhi's ongoing quest to annoy her sister-in-law—she and her brother were orphaned young and he's been her guardian for ages, you see. It's very tragic," she added to me.

"Losing one may be an accident; losing both is just carelessness?" I half-quoted. Neither of them seemed to approve.

"And intermittent underage smoking isn't the _most_ shocking thing she's done on school property...but listening to unsubstantiated rumors is wrong," Imogen said, trying to stripe her words a delicate pink.

"Don't need to know," I said.

"Bodh's a party girl, like me. They said she walked new into seventh grade and pulled a water gun on Ms Selwin..." Imogen reminisced. "High school pranks, high school fun, and this time next year I'll be just about ready to start filling apps for journalism college. Time flies even when you fill it up, doesn't it?"

—


	27. The Rally

_I know you're hiding events because you want to avoid incriminating your mother of anything, Xavier._

_I'd hate to think it was anything so obvious._

_You don't need to sneer. I'm supposed to be non-judgmental. You are _not_ helping me to help you._

I'm_ not charged with anything, am I? Therefore I lack any requirement to respond. Nothing you can do to me, and you don't even have the time to bother._

_Many things you say give me _good_ impressions about you, actually. We've had a conversation about Thomas Hardy. Your education might be irregular but I'm probably going to recommend you reintegrate into a mainstream school. But it's up to you?_

_Now you sound uncertain, Sonya._

_Sometimes we all are and those feelings are okay. I know, I know, proverbs and platitudes, right? Sorry, we're out of time today. See you...uh, soon. I'll check my datebook. You keep well._

She was the Seattle caseworker, and she wasn't as bad as many of the others.

_There aren't the same things to be afraid of any more._

The last time I saw my mother she was sad and I didn't know why. She talked: but only twice and the wrong words in the wrong places; I asked her and she shook her head in distress. It would be pointless to tell her about things she could do nothing about, and they watched us. She put a hand on my shoulder and dug her fingers in sharply enough to hurt, but probably she knew me; that was what I wanted. I needed to protect her, because I'd always know she did her best to do the same for me. It was Gordon who they would listen to in there, and he had not helped her.

It was cold and early and still quiet. I opened a book. Answers more likely in study than in half-storied suggestions; Porphyria—

_Her long fair neck of porcelain pure,_  
_Her crimson lip and carmine eye._  
_Porphyria's will: her potent lure._  
_Prayer, god or death grant me no cure._

_I mind what happens to Jenessa._

She had family and friends and many others who would mind for her.

Bodhi should like her. Enough not to eat her. They were good at cars and speaking their minds.

If you let anyone in, it hurts. If you let onto weakness, someone will take it—if you don't mean more trouble than you're worth. It's bad to talk. Writing slips through gaps.

_I like her. I like her quickness and when she's acrid and honest. I like her more than I loathe Ms Enn's class. I like how brash and bold she is. She's intelligent about many things I don't know about._

_She doesn't hate me. She'd say so if she did. It doesn't matter what she thinks of me; it matters how she treats me. And _that's..._kind. Acid. Humorous. Straightforward._

_And I can't say anything to her because Bodhi will know. She knows everything I've told._

Proof positive.

_The mind is a sequence of electrical signals passed between millions of synapses in the brain. Why one mind and not another? Why minds and not microwaves?_

It was too early for Bodhi and on the roof nobody would come near. Wind whipped past the skylight. I scribbled notes. Knowing may not help at all—especially when they will believe you should be locked up for having delusions—but when you start with a problem and a hypothesis...

_Does a human body look like a fountain of fresh blood, thinly surrounded by bits of flesh as soft as a wet paper bag?_

I swallowed a dry lump in my throat and went down.

_More important things_.

Patterns. Ms Enn liked quiet. I looked at Jenessa's familiar shape: a small-built girl wrapped up in a heavy jacket and wool-filled boots, right hand over her keyboard and strands of her dark hair stuck to her face. Many things I could have easily said crowded into the back of my mind; I'd want to tell her everything and maybe she'd understand better than I did. I joined her.

HEY, she wrote.

_Hey_.

_You know,_ I wrote, _that the source of a line of immortal human cells was a woman who died fifty years ago? They were cancer cells that grew in only a few months inside her. When she died the tumors were the size of clenched fists inside her and all her organs were dotted with white growths like pearls._

GROSS. COOL. Jenessa grinned back.

_They used her body. But she was dead and couldn't mind any more._

UNLESS SHE WAS A ZOMBIE. UH, NEVER MIND, she typed back. I CAN BEAT THAT WITH THE LAST OPERATION I HAD...

She told a long story that involved catheters and a seeing-eye dog for a blind patient in the next ward.

_Speaking of stories I figured out the Rhoda Jansen one_, I wrote back to her._ It didn't happen here. A girl called Rhoda? County bloodhounds? Outlaws and townships? If it's based on something that happened it happened in a town that existed long before this one did. The details make it sound much further back than Imogen wrote it. You know anything more?_

FAMILY LEGEND AROUND HALLOWE'EN? BIT LATE TO OBSESS OVER.

_Better late than never._

I'VE GOT A SECOND COUSIN CALLED DIREXIA AND A BROTHER CALLED JEDEDIAH, she pointed out. TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NAME TRADS.

_I still like the concept._

SURE, BUT GET YOUR OWN FAMILY LEGENDS. She paused.

YOU KNOW, IF YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE A SUDDEN INTEREST IN CAR ENGINES, she wrote, YOU SHOULD ACTUALLY TAKE ONE. INSTEAD OF SULKING.

_No good at it._

OH COME ON, DON'T BE USELESS. DIDN'T YOU DO STUFF FOR MAGGIE THATCHER'S HAUNTED HOUSE?

_Not machinery. I worked in the back of a pawn shop once_, I told her. The longest time I'd been able to have something. _I cleaned things and fixed things, if it was simple. How to polish pewter. Open up a jukebox._

NOT VERY EXCITING? Jenessa asked.

_Of course not. It was good while it lasted._ I remembered Mr Ewing: short and fleshy-built, his face wrinkled and dark like the neck of a stained guitar. The stockroom was dusty, unlit, and piled with items: jewelry, instruments, watches, televisions, jugs, pictures, tools. I kept inventory and knew the list in memory; one flute, silver plated, dented case, two potpourri bowls in pewter, grape-painted china jug... He paid in cash and that job kept us for a few months in a shared squat. Living in a big house isn't worth the cost. This town being a case in point.

FIRED?

_Downsized, mostly for budget reasons. And I wasn't good with customers._

CAN IMAGINE. She snickered.

"I'm sorry," I said aloud. I owed an apology to the teacher. It would not be enough.

I sat up at night, the window locked, lights on; making sense of things that didn't. Turning over pages.

_You transform. I saw you transform! And you weigh more as wolves, don't you?_

_Yeah, so we can outfight the vamps and anything else_, Monty boasted.

_But extra mass. Mass is supposed to come from somewhere. It's related to energy—E equals em cee squared—it shouldn't be possible—I don't know enough._

_Chase says stuff about coming from the earth._

_It can't come from real wolves. Chase also says there aren't supposed to be any real wolves left near here. And the _other_ werewolves—what happened to the ones before? Why did they stop turning? Why weren't there more until you?_

_Dunno. Story says if you stop phasing you get old and die. Look, you have to be _serious_ to know the proper stories, all right? We don't give them away to anyone who just asks._

_When was the last time someone turned into a wolf, then?_

_Probably not long after the cold ones left the land the first time. I guess._

_There was a fire._

_Yeah, but that was way after, Swan. I don't get why you'd want to quit and not give your kids the chance to turn into a giant wolf and be stronger and faster than everything and protect the tribe. Because it's awesome._

A knocking at the door. I stopped turning pages and asked; Gordon shouldered his way in, still dressed in uniform.

_It's too late._

"What do you want?"

He had to ask obvious questions. "What are you doing?"

He should have seen book, exercise book, pen. "Does it look like homework to you?" I picked up the mug by the lamp.

"—Yeah. Yeah, it does. And that smells like coffee. Isn't that a bit much at this hour of night?" I waited a moment. His speech was off: clipped beginnings of words and longer pauses. I looked down at my work. "—Okay, I know it's nothing I haven't done, but you're still young."

He didn't know what to do. "If that's all, then..."

"You should turn on the heater. I don't want you to be cold." He reached down. The door was still open behind him.

"I'm not. And I don't go into where you sleep." Anyone should know not to take advantage of a small space. But many people would.

Gordon stared at me. "I've nothing to hide. It wouldn't matter. I wouldn't give a damn."

The mug moved in my hands. I lowered it; let my hands rest on the edge of the desk. I ought to look at him clear-eyed and know the truth. "Perhaps I do."

"I know. You're a liar, you steal money, and you've forged my signature for school," he said openly.

_—mass and energy were considered as separate until the discovery of their relation..._

_Unimportant, unimportant, let him talk..._

"How can I believe you? How can I know you?" his voice continued. "Sometimes you try to act human and it's like you're reading off a script. Tell me what I'm meant to do."

I met his eyes and did not look down. "Nothing that has to be done now. Go back to your room," I said. He filled a small room. His wrists were thick inside their cuffed sleeves.

"I don't regret it," he said. "That we had you. That I married your mother. I thought you should know that."

"I don't understand. You look like you're coming down with something. Go drink some lemon juice." You couldn't turn away. Watch what he did and the gaps he left. He was not moving toward and over me.

_It was stupid of Ms Enn._

"You care about her," Gordon said. "I can see that every time you talk about your mother. You look like her, you've always looked like her. You've spent time lately with Monty. You've put in an effort on driving. They're good things. Some good things."

_Say what you want to say and go. I've had other stepfathers._ "Don't."

"Someone's dead," Gordon said.

—

I shouldn't have asked if their blood was drained.

"It's because I saw a dead deer. You can't blame it on me."

"You're going to show us exactly where. As soon as it's daylight. You should have told."

"It's a hunting town."

"He was a young guy. From the logging range. He went out alone and..."

"Eaten?"

"Not an animal. All you need to know is that we're investigating a murder. I don't want you out on your own."

I'd remembered; was sure I remembered the doe lying cold; but there was no sign in that clearing. Animals ate other animals. Dead bodies turned to dust. Animals watch other animals carefully with bright eyes—

"It's not the only one of the kind," I heard Gordon say. Officer Dosan's face tightened to straight lines in mouth and eyes, but he said nothing.

"Want me to take him to school, Chief?" V. Violet said, rounding the trio of them. She folded her arms.

"I'll do it. Come on, Xavier." I walked behind him. It was still early; frost shivered above the grass where I knew I'd seen the body.

"It's not the same as the animals," I heard Dosan say, watching Gordon. His words slipped out smooth and slick, coiling like something wet. "The vine around his neck—"

"Angelo." Gordon raised a hand. Dosan shrugged and pursed his lips. "I'll drive. Make it quick," Gordon told me.

"Not a word at school. Understand? And I don't want you walking home on your own, it's not safe and it's cold. I'd ask Angelo if his daughter could give you a lift, but her car's gone after the accident. Melissa?" He began to use his cell.

"No, I'll ask. Val or Maggie or even Erin. It had nothing to do with me, it didn't happen near here..."

_You're lucky that we were the first to taste your scent. Those who drink blood aren't known for their restraint._ Wiser to ask and hope for a chance to avoid repayment.

He looked at me: stared or wondered or still felt he knew nothing about me. "I don't want to hear of you in any more accidents. Or worse. And I don't have the time. Call me after you're home."

"I hate being trapped in cars with people I don't like."

"Then get out."

He held the same force as the last time something had happened in his town, and rid the cruiser of me. I raised a hand to my head and walked away.

You could imagine news spreading like a virus, catching through. I stood still and eavesdropped on distorted conversations. Monty wasn't at the school; no Cullen either. _Something started before I came here. _Val and Misha noticed Chase's absence; Erin kept her head down over her work; none of the four motorcycles was in place. He was the cousin of a tall brown-haired boy I knew nothing about; a logger; the wrong place and the wrong time for something to lose control.

_We'd get to run the filthy leeches out of town._

_In five years little Monty might be strong enough to give a good fight._

Monty sat down, plump-faced and short, a rubber band ball between his hands, talking about killing and deaths.

The stories changed and distorted: someone hiding in the trees with a club, a gunshot, an axe-murder, torn apart with one of his own saws. I sat in the corner of the cafeteria Alora used, left to myself.

"Hi there! Mind if I join?" The swinging chesspiece on the silver chain caught on a glint of fluorescent light above, falling from Imogen's neck.

I said nothing.

"Say, how about the latest news? I knew his family—a little bit—it's not fair and someone's gone too far this time with an actual death—"

I watched her, closed-mouthed.

"It's a weirdness too many—and I'm not accusing you of anything at all because it's obvious—I think what I was overlooking was all the animal stories, even though plenty of folk hunt. The wrong kind of creature died. You ever see one of those animals?"

I didn't reply.

She glanced down at the fries and salad on her tray. "Opportunities," she said. "And means, and motive—I hope it turns out to be someone passing through, not someone everyone knows in town—like the terrorists they still haven't caught far's I know. And it's also annoying—" she flashed back at me.

I gave her a wordless shrug.

"Someone's come back and they have to still be around here. Passing through without a cause isn't enough of a reason," Imogen said.

Or a sudden loss of control out there in the woods. I stayed silent.

"Right. You know, if life was a horror murder mystery movie, you'd totally be that guy who kisses the dust in the first five minutes for being obtuse and slightly weird," she said, though she grinned like a cheshire cat.

Enough time, I thought. "And you'd be the nosy one who tries to blackmail the murderer with inevitable results?"

She laughed easily. "Nice Jewish girls get to live. I think. Anyway, I'd only blackmail them over an exclusive interview before turning them in—wait.

"If we're speaking of lethal," she said, lowering a fry into mayonnaise, "then you really shouldn't be eating the cafeteria mystery meat. Much more likely than an axe murderer to get you where it counts.

"Nobody's polled it but about one-third of the town is Jansens. I guess that makes us a bit mad," Imogen said. "Heck, everyone's a little bit mad sometimes—or is that like a really insensitive thing to say?" She speared a lettuce leaf with her fork.

"William Blake saw angels and nobody said he was mad. This guy who died in eighteen twenty-seven," I said. "He was a painter and he wrote things. Apocalypses. Creations. Lots of angels, not the fluffy kind with harps. Other worlds. The tiger poem about fearful symmetry, burning eyes from distant skies and strange sinews twisting— And then other people talk about the smile on the face of the tiger. And he wrote other things—whatever is born of mortal birth must be consumed within the earth, the lines—" Sometimes it was easy to let the words come.

"Eww, poetry," Imogen said. The eye of her chesspiece seemed to wink in the light.

"And Joan of Arc talked to saints and led wars and nobody thought she was mad. More people did that back then, because they believed and used it as a way to think about the world. She said she wished everyone could hear the same voices as her in her head; she preferred her banner to her sword; innocent, intocable, kind. A knight who burned brightly." I saw Imogen's knight below her burnished hair. "That's possibly a double meaning."

"It only caught up to you a beat later." Imogen shrugged into the cheerleader's jacket she wore, trying to smooth out her brow. "The lady knight, huh? You don't play chess, right? Too bad. My father gave me this the first time I made it to a state championship." She toyed with her necklace between the fingers of her right hand. "Somehow I can't imagine you hearing saints or angels talking."

She smiled and switched subjects easily. Perhaps she held no grudges; perhaps she always expected others to forget as quickly. "Hey, I know you kind of like English class despite yourself. What d' you think of Mr Al Hira's take on Mice and Men? Another book about depressing people who do depressing things—and when the only female character doesn't even get a name I call annoying. At least he understands."

I'd read the story. "Tell me about the rabbits. Then there won't be no more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody, and live on the land. Or so they promise to each other in words. It makes sense. I've known people like them. They do what they have to do."

"They kill people," Imogen said.

The wind outside late in the afternoon tossed grey fragments of rain forward and backward like clouds of dust. You walked through the day and let it go when you could. There'd be a dissection of the dead, investigation of someone or something. And I thought I knew.

"Get in." Ms Enn fought with the weather. She carried a stack of folders and papers and her wet hair fell across her face. She opened the small dented boot of her car and then slammed it closed once more. "I don't get paid to play babysitter."

"Then don't try. Just drive." But that was dangerous to say. She turned her key.

"—In history classes at the moment it's Constantine," I said. "How he became a myth instead of only an emperor. Even his mother was part of stories about him, Saint Helena, Elene, triumph-blessed, with a band of spear-brave earls—" I made the words of the photocopy spool through my mind: she had not taken that away and the lines came easily because they were well-phrased. Things buzzed and changed inside my head. It meant nothing because it was only about school. "I like the use of kennings, the epithets—the words roll well enough. So this world will disappear and the hungry flame seize those that were born here, it says. Woven with wordcraft, aged and hurrying to depart this uncertain house..."

"Shut up." Ms Enn glared at the road, the rain pouring across creaking windshield wipers.

"You usually try to make me talk. Miraculously gleaning, deliberating and sifting thoughts in the closeness of night. Then you reach an epiphany. The bone-coffer unbound, it says, breast-lock unwound, skill unlocked. And I liked the part about travelling on ships: bath-way, salt-wood, sea-horses, wading wave-floaters, whorled prows, old wave-houses. Well-written. And there's one much later about Rome's change of religion: beyond the sea-wall, between the sea-gates, waste water washes and tall ships founder and deep death waits." It ought to be meaningless. The words flowed. "Unspeakable things. White-eyed, poison-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled. The old gods are cruel but the old gods are lovely, and then they die away. Yet the earlier one about Elene tries to show the new as beautiful."

The engine sputtered; the road crawled on. I'd pushed down the window though the cold and rain blew inside, and ignored her asking me to close it. _Probably should not. Unwise to grin that she's not stopping me._ "Bridle the sea. Set fire to the winds. Sleep when others walk over..."

Then some gears ground to a squeaking halt and the car itself slowed and stuck. She pulled over, walked out into the rain, and swore to herself at length, her glare only aimed down at her problem.

"...Ruined tire. Of all days." I heard her fling open the boot again and saw her drag out a spare, a jack, and a spanner. "You," she snapped, and leaned over her open window. "You know how to help?"

"Not at all." It was very true.

She bent down in the rain and cursed again. She seemed to know what to do with the jack; she tried to raise the collar of her plastic overcoat for the weather. She swore again—and then her hand reached up and wrenched open her passenger door.

"Walk," she said. I flinched: she leaned above me and came too close; but she was angry about the rain and her car and things that had kept her eyes on the road. "I don't have time to deal with crap. Go have a nice five-minute walk."

I started to run.

The ground was wet. I wasn't tired; my feet fell into a rhythm, rushing past slippery leaves, bookbag shifting. _You run like a cow. No —ing technique_, I'd been told. I wasn't slow.

_Nothing to do with me really nothing to do with me._

Then the giant wolf broke from the trees.

"Leb." Something in your hindbrain told you _this should not be real_; but then even in the cold the wolf's warmth radiated through the air like a stove. Humans were driven toward heat. The tall boy walked out of the trees buckling a pair of jeans. He frowned.

"Go back home," he said. "Monty said to sniff out if you were on your own, in case more bloodsuckers think you're weird. I didn't want to do babysitting duty when we could be hunting."

Lebegue Ateara: he read sci-fi like Jenessa, his friends claimed he was clumsy, he walked as if his elbows embarrassed him.

"You're hunting for Helen." The pieces linked together easily. "They have powers. Helen's the one with plants. There was a vine strangling the body. She killed him with her gifts."

"Killed Wally Abhard. Yeah." Leb chewed on his bottom lip.

"Where are you hunting?" We walked on quickly.

He scowled. "Filthy bloodsuckers've left trails everywhere. Criss-crossing. Monty's north, Chase west, Is and Fane south. I'm in town. We can hear everyone else when we're changed."

"Telepathy." The wolf pack. Change shape and there was instantaneous communication between them—or was there always? Distance was time if you turned it around enough and looked at it funny—

"Sorta. Not so much words. Way too much of Chase's sordid sex life. You're never alone unless you're human," the wolf-turned-boy said.

"Hellish."

"Ask Nat what it's like to be left out when all your friends can do it. And he's not useless like you."

Nat Uley had fought by Monty's side, helping me: and being injured for it.

"You're going home and staying there," Leb said.

"And when I'm behind a set of doors vampires have to be invited inside?" Ms Enn had underestimated the time; still walking by the road. Drops of rain glinted on the grass.

Leb laughed without much trace of humor. "Doors can't stop their kind or ours! The claws rip through _granite_! We could break into the federal reserve—uh, not that we'd want to do bank robberies. It's that if there're witnesses or someone dialed nine-one-one then the bloodsuckers' own people rip them apart afterwards."

_Specifically, after having eaten._

"But we're made to protect people, even the useless ones," the boy said. The air was grey with mist, though the rain had lessened. "That's why we imprint. Makes us know—"

He broke off and smelt the air in the thick fog. He looked confused, wrinkling his nose, then biting at the inside of his cheeks for a moment. "Smells kinda...I don't know. Wrong. I'm turning again." He grabbed my sleeve, too strong for a human, and quickly dragged me down the ridge below the road, then let go.

The giant wolf's fur was a shade of brown mixed with a burnt orange—lighter than Monty's dark hair—I though he was slightly smaller but it was near impossible to tell. It nudged its clothing into a pouch strapped to a thick foreleg. A brown lip curled away from the bright white teeth, the tip of a red tongue running along them, the pose of it leaning forward as if about to leap and kill—

We went on. The wolf was large enough that it would be impossible to escape from it; pacing quickly by my side. The mist was thick though the rain light. The thick air was dust and rain—from a distance it might look as if we walked through a white pillar. I'd seen this before. The cloud swirled around us and the wolf would twitch and bare its teeth as if it smelt something horrible. Rain fell down from the dark green needles of tall trees within the mist: we could see only close in front of us, in white so thick half the wolf seemed to disappear.

._..autumn mist in the trees and a spot of dust on the wind, between the tall old spruces. Late fall._

Then I was bleeding and could not feel it. First I saw streaks on both arms that became deep long cuts as if an invisible knife cut me open. The blood boiled away from my skin. Red droplets filled the air. Then it was on my face, cheeks, eyelids: still no pain, but blood roiled in the space in front of my eyes. I brought up my forearms to protect my face and saw new lines of bleeding cuts on the skin. A moment longer and I felt the thousand tiny razors striping through me. The red torrents surged in the air, blinding me, flowing up and joining with each other instead of falling to the ground. The razors cut more deeply, channels of blood, rivers of blood, all flowing away from my veins.

The wolf howled, and the feel of his blazing heat dove through the air close by me: but there was nothing.

—

A/N: Henrietta Lacks was a real person and her story deserves more respect than this fic can give. One of my primary sources was Rebecca Skloot's excellent book on her.

William Blake quotes should be reasonably obvious; as well, George Bernard Shaw's theories on Joan of Arc are an influence. Poem translation: oe-elene. blogspot. com. au. Swinburne reference is to the poem 'Hymn to Proserpine'. Title reference to Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

I've edited imprinting because I don't think Meyer's version makes any kind of worldbuilding sense.


	28. The Consequence

Mist and dust and blood boiled in the air. The palms of my hands were wet with rain. I lay on the grass, hands spread, legs cut into: blood boiled upwards and joined into itself. Scarlet shapes. Bright red, fresh, so much more than a simple pinprick. My head spun lightly and there was the pain again. My eyelids bled but I could see past the pain, and then into the blood that shaped itself out of mist. The wolf howled and snapped at dust.

The blood fashioned itself into one shape. It drew together, floating in the air. I began to see part of a mouth, part of a face, part of a throat. Light dust and red blood. Mist—no, it was white dust—flowed along the edge of the cuts on me, rising, joining.

Throat. Chin. Sinews. Lips. The red mouth opened.

"Sav..." a thin, ashen voice whispered in the air. "Save..." Or perhaps it could have been the beginning of the name my mother gave me. Something roared in my ears like waves in a glass or seashell.

"Help me..." the blood-mouth asked. Then the head of the wolf dove through it. Droplets of blood scattered but tried to reform. Warm blood rolled down my face. The wolf's noise was deafening. Its muzzle was red-stained. My hands tried to stop the bleeding, thighs and forearms and face and then my back— Fog. Nothing but fog.

Fog in my mind below the pain. Eaten by thin air.

_I remember..._

Then something grabbed me.

There was running too fast through the trees. Zigzags. Something cold held me close and whistling wind did not blow across my face. A pale chin above me, and a woman's long hair. The world whirled backward. I closed my eyes and waited—

Hands took me by the shoulders: neither gentle nor ungentle. I had dreamed of nothing but blackness and no sign of my mother. Blood filmed over my eyes and the knife cuts burned.

—_Leave me alone and stop TOUCHING me._ The blades of grass swayed the wrong way and the earth shook below me so there was no way to know which was up. Everything was wet and cold and someone tied up the blood. Bandages out of clothing. A feel of bark and layers of fabric behind my back. I wanted to beg for water in my throat.

"There is no time."

Jon Cullen's face. X-rays. Listening to him—answering him. The cold memory.

_I'm going to test your coherence. That is all_, he said, and asked nothing worse than a school test. Bodhi must have come to know. Reasoning. Things my mother taught me. Stuttering attempts—my mind was muddy then as now it spun in all directions at once—to decipher languages I didn't know. Then Jon Cullen released me from the hospital still sedated. He bent over my leg now, pale-faced. Always pale. A hand wiped a wet cloth over my face.

I remembered.

"Rhoda Jansen. Thin air."

They didn't understand. I licked stray water at the corner of my mouth. I saw Helen Cullen's face. Still framed by red-gold hair: still beige and fading. A monster.

"Helen. Murderer."

Her eyes were black and behind the rag her hands were gentle. If I had closed my eyes I could have not known.

"Please call me Ellie. I am not your enemy, child."

"Helen. You strangled him with a vine." She wiped the corner of my eyes. I closed them behind the red film.

"No," said the woman's voice, quiet as the click of a streetlight. "He is my sins remembered."

Those words meant flowers in a madwoman's hair. Curved writing tried to dance. Many waters. She was telling that she was mad. She was telling that I was mad. The world swayed again. She was not speaking the right words. Her eyes were lifeless black when they should have been green.

Gold.

"Take him if you would him to live," the cold voice cut like the thinnest and sharpest of skewers. They spoke too quickly. "Treatment is indicated. Yet this was not done with intention of ending his life. I will carry him if you favor it."

_Not him._

"That would be best, Jon," the high woman's voice breathed. "I cannot restrain..."

A wolf's howl. Running feet. And then the wolf flung the woman away from me. My eyes opened: it was a clash too fast to see even without the whirling inside. Helen and Leb, Helen and a giant wolf. Only for flashes could the fight be seen. He sped and she raised her hands to throw him down. A slash flung open the brown overall she wore. Then I saw that she defended and he attacked: claws and teeth against open-palmed shielding. The trees around them cracked and bent and it was not only that they crashed into them. I saw a gate she leaped over in two old cedar trunks. The slim human shape changed direction instantly, wolf's bulk a beat behind. Helen's loosed hair fell in a waterfall across her back and flew with her.

"Jon, do not kill the child!" she cried out. Her husband left me. There were two of them now. But the wolves knew each other's heads.

It was fast, then. A treetrunk snapped around the wolf. The moment later the wood fell apart, but then the shape of a vampire had grabbed it. I did not see it move. The bark was a rough sense of reality. Blood smelt sharp.

The two cold ones flung—threw away—the body, far into the trees—skidding on its own wolf's head. I did not hear Leb rise.

I tried to stand. I was halfway on my knees. "Don't." I lurched forward and began to fall on my face. But icy hands took me: I struggled.

"What is the reason, boy?" Wolves howled. He pressed my arms to my side with cold hands. "Helen, draw away the interfering puppies and rendezvous with my sister."

"The Quileute children are younger than he. They must not be harmed."

"As you wish."

Clutched to another. I wanted my skin to run away from him. He froze the blood that was left in me. He was a statue, an ice statue and a terror of the cold. He dragged me away: tree blurring into tree and those frozen hands, always those frozen hands. I lost the ability to tell the difference between the trees long before he stopped. The dust and the mouth stung my mind like a screw screaming in a thousand drills, and the distant howls of wolves had long since faded away.

He was forcing a salt-tasting drink into my mouth. Holding my throat.

"Be still. I am healing you." In a wide bare room; a crackling plastic sheet spread over a couch; a wide glass window and trees rising up behind it, making the gold light of a sunset into green. Antiseptic stung viciously, stabbing across face and body. I tried to curl into myself.

"Were I my sister I could pluck the knowledge directly from your head. Or not: for your unexpected resistances." His white hands were sticky with my blood. He bent over me again. I should have tried better to make him stop. His face was too close to my skin. "The spacing of these cuts lies too thin—and with too great a finesse—for a werewolf's claws. Too proximate still for our own nails." His own were closely trimmed: only a very thin line of lighter white below the ball. He pressed on changed bandages and sent another wave of pain. He'd stripped me. I whimpered something.

"I have no prurient interest, boy. Hypovolemia. Do you understand? Hypodermic, below the skin. Septicemia. Ischaemia."

Decipher the word from the parts. "Stupid games."

"No game," Jon Cullen said. His dark eyes were flat; his cheeks sharp as Bodhi's. He easily held me down as if he was an icy rock. "Drink again."

Blood loss. I had not bothered to give on the day.

I was sure the face I had seen in blood was a woman's; that she begged for help; and that I did not want to give it.

Fingers pressed down on chin and throat. It sparked on my tongue. A drug; another sedative; something dissolved; drinking blood to replace blood stolen, not blood...

I gagged. Part of it dribbled past my chin. "Monty's not stupid. He'll know where you are."

Then I spat in his face. He showed no sign of exacting revenge.

A door slammed closed. "That's why I'm here," spoke a high female voice. "Jon, if you keep him here than something bad will happen, but I can't see what the bad thing is going to be. So make him sleep..."

A needle split open veins in my wrist. Something checked the pulse. They forced me to drown.

"Goody! It would have been very bad for you to sleep too long."

It was muddy and hopeless and dark. The words were loud and then soft.

"You should really have one of those drips in your arm, but we can't run you to hospital. So eat and drink up."

"Or I will force you," a lower voice required. Something shook over rough road.

_It's a car._ Shards of metal slammed against each other. My skull beat against itself. I was covered by a heavy blanket, scratching relentlessly.

_Monty, Leb, cold Jon. Alora._ The large dark shape next to her in front was more impossible to know. He pressed another salt-tasting drink.

_Antony._

There was a strong sickly floral scent spilled everywhere, as if someone had destroyed a perfume shop. The car windows were closed.

"And eat," he said. It was a Happy Meal. My hands barely worked: they looked pale in the low light. Streetlamps flowed past, distant-spaced. Not a busy road.

"Proteins," Alora said, "it'll be good for you. We can always buy more. Humans are quite easy to feed and you can eat such a lot of things. It hasn't been easy for us in here."

"Alora, eyes on the road," Antony rumbled.

"Do you like my perfume? It's gardenias and pink roses, it's pretty."

"It's positively horrible."

"I used up all my bottles but it's still not as strong as the other thing," Alora chirped. "But if I just keep driving and Antony helps me then I probably won't have a little slipup about eating the right things. At least Jon bandaged you up nicely, and the antiseptic smell is pretty strong too, above your..."

"Alora, stop talking of it. Ingesting the likes of him would defile you in any case," Antony said.

The food slipped down.

"A feeble-minded street Arab," he said. "My control is not Helen's or Jon's but it is strong enough for this mortal waste."

The world should become slightly clearer. Fat and salt and warmth, if it had not been tampered with. My head throbbed. The cuts burned, slightly dulled now.

"It's okay to be mad," Alora said smoothly. "But you have to be careful about changing mad people, because they stay mad. Do you see things that really come true later, anything at all, Xavier? I did when I was human. It was why they thought I was mad and locked me in a very bad place. Things are better these days even if you are mad. Is there anything that you see is true before you are told it, or things that you know immediately?"

It took too long to follow the yellow thread of her words. "Of course not. What I see is not how it turns out most of the time. Delusions." My voice was thin and cracked.

"I can see the future," she said, spilling away into other worlds—perhaps a distraction. "And Bodhi hears voices inside her head all the time; she cannot stop them. But maybe you're just crazy. That's okay, though. It doesn't make you less of a person."

I saw she drove with attachments to the pedals for her legs, a higher seat. Under a passing street light Antony's eyes were yellow as he stared into the back. The doors were locked on the inside.

"What's going on?" I said. The car rattled. Half-formed ideas fell away from me. Alora spoke into a silver mobile phone on her dashboard.

"Jon, I still can't clearly see," she said. "They always change. They must be mad. It's worse than he is. And little Monty also blinds me."

"I ought to fight rather than act the nanny," Antony said: short-tempered. Dangerous.

The answer to them was in a low, unclear tone.

"There is the...creature. And there is Carl. And the other who changes all the time," Alora said. "And I see the Moirai shall not intervene. There are things you must tell, Jon."

Another low answer: only a word or two vaguely guessable. You drove cars so as not to be tracked, I thought. Not by smell. Not by trail. Not by the ways humans hunted.

_Monty seems to be...alive._ He was more innocent than he tried to make people believe. His friend's head hit the ground like a piece of rag.

A wave of rubble swept through my head again. It wasn't burning below the bandages: it was shining knives in sharp clean antiseptic, perhaps something that ground down the pain. Cold sweat dripped from forehead and beating palms. If you folded a piece of paper and dipped it into water, slowly it dissolved away.

"Maybe we can store him, though we can't trust him to behave himself," Alora said. "Drink, Xavier. Let's go."

I wanted to remember and replace the puzzle pieces in my head. Sickly orange lights flashed through the windows and sped away again. The cloud of perfume was so heavy in the air that I should have been able to see it, weighty like a living thing. I stared at it and tried to make it move. The voices in front were too low and too fast to follow. Nonsense. Colors flashed.

"Wake. I will force this down your throat or you will probably expire." There were metallic edges on my mouth. Cold inhuman hands—like a statue, only a statue, not the one I was afraid of. Ignore statues as not real...

_You'll drown me._ The hands let me go and someone spoke of disgust.

Street signs flashed rarely by but not one yet I knew of. Crossing southeastward like on a bus. Country roads with odd names and rattling gravel below the wheels, blurred whites below orange light. I was very tired.

Carl, Moirai. New words.

"How about some nice, happy music?" Alora's voice rang out. The radio's lights danced to cheerful oldfashioned jazz with an underbeat like rattling bones. It blocked out the voices.

Know what's—wanted. Gas for one thing...

_Scream and make a break for it when they stop. They don't have oil-generating superhuman powers._ I lay on my arms, fingers scrabbling at the ends of bandages. Plasters on my face. Another black wave struck at my head. I felt a hand of rock press down on my tongue.

It was a little lighter outside and my mouth was dry and empty.

"You know, you call for your mother a lot when you're out of things," Alora's voice said cheerily. "It's rather sweet."

"I knew that. What are the Moirai?"

"You're filthy as well as a weakling," Antony accused.

"That too." Dried sweat and sticky substances by the cuts and worse. It hurt to move. I babbled again.

"You could talk. It wouldn't hurt you. Are you going to let me go? Later?"

_The one of Helen's sins isn't on their side. Probably not the white thing outlined in blood._

"If you don't know what the other one was, Imogen's story had something similar. She said it was a Jansen, but the details don't fit it happening here. Happening there. But if it wanted Jansen blood..."

_Pretty sure I don't have that qualification._

"Mayor Jansen?" Antony said. "Hm. The Moirai would take notice were she to be attacked."

A street sign flashed by: it was back in the state. Alora must have circled back, judging how long and how fast. It wasn't yet dawn. It was just light enough to see the brown tint on her windows.

"The mayor's not the only Jansen. If you don't kill humans—go after your enemies."

"There's bad news too, Xavier." Alora tapped her fingers on the wheel with a sound like ice chips colliding against each other. "Do you want another Happy Meal to make things better? I love how cheerful they look, although I never got to have any when I was alive. We just can't hunger for the same things normal people do any more. It only tastes like plaster, even the pink things, and it always comes up again as black sludge. It's very icky." I tried to glare at her. At last she continued.

"Your father's found traces of your blood and it won't be long before they identify it. And little Monty still believes it was Helen or one of us. That poor dear puppy." She drove a right turn so sharp as to shake the car and send even Antony slipping from side to side, and rammed down a hand for the shrill tone of her car horn. The plastic bottles scattered below the seats rattled back and forth.

_Who to believe indeed?_

At least some broken pieces made a picture. I lay in Alora's back seat, too exhausted to sit up. "Then Bodhi and the others are hunting this...Carl. Why haven't they been successful?"

Antony turned back again. "We did not tell you of him," he began as if about to make another threat.

"Helen did. He's her sins remembered. She changed him."

But then they both burst into laughter.

"Never," Antony said. "Thoroughly wrong. How any of us might have thought you possessed some kind of talent is beyond me," he hissed.

"It's okay, Xavier, he just has power envy," Alora stage-whispered, and giggled too long over it. "Antony has power envy over Bodhi and me..."

Then she broke off. The car's steering whirled in the wrong direction: Antony grabbed it from her.

Alora stared into space, all golden eyes in a small light-skinned face. The road zigzagged and rattled below and Antony cursed, and she cared nothing for it.

"They're ambushing Bodhi," Alora said. Antony laughed.

"Fool they! A primitive plan. Are Veronica and Killigan able to assist her?"

Alora stared ahead and past the glass of windows and windshield. "They offer her food."

"A tribute. They beg for mercy already," Antony said. "She ought to refuse."

"Antony, it's _wrong_," Alora's high voice said. "There are pines behind her. A small gravel path. An old sign—it's...rusting and about forest fires. I have to know where. Antony, you have to go. Run, it's faster." Alora's fingers frantically reached for a screen showing maps. "Where? Where it is blood, bad blood, all blood. He sharpens himself to razor wire. Bodhi is strong but there's too much from the warm throat. And there is also the other and that makes it all go black and wrong in my head—" A finger jabbed at a line: her screen moved in response, showing contour lines of ground height and cycling tracks. I blinked. Like Jenessa's screen when she was fast, a map like flashing bright video and hopeless to follow.

"It's stopped now," Alora said. Her voice was a monotone for once in place of the cloying cheer. "Everything's stopped. Help her now. Run for it. Jon, you too." She pressed a button.

Antony reached for the door handle in blinding speed, thrust himself out, and then he was gone from the moving car, running faster than it. Alora gripped the wheel.

"I know how," I said. "So if you wanted to run out too, then..."

_Steal her car and run for it. Bound to be some money in the glovebox._ Moving an arm sent red streaks aching inside. Alora smiled as if she could see that future.

"No," she said, "but I'm going to make sure you put some clothes on."

—


	29. Disaster's Cavern

_Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing._ _Have you heard_  
_That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?_ - Gates of Damascus, James Elroy Flecker

_—_

She was driving back to Forks, taking odd deserted trails on dirt roads and treating her car like a mouse in a maze, gazing outwards with strange golden eyes. She found no other traffic near her path.

"Someone else is being eaten."

_It hurts. Of course it hurts. Should be able to think of something else._

"It's not our fault, but it's sad," Alora replied. "I can't see everything. Sometimes I walk around and look at people just to try see what will make someone happiest, but sometimes it goes all wrong."

She drove the car, a small young girl. That would have been bad if she was human. We were alone, the keys hanging inside the ignition—a bright pink-and-yellow plastic puppy bobbing up and down from the ring. It would have been wrong.

The head turned and Alora's yellow eyes flashed back at me.

"You're about to try to kill yourself stealing my car in your state! That's very nasty and mean!"

I startled; fell silent.

"Flashes of actions. It's always close if that, with you. It's true. You're mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Xavier. And maybe people would like you better if you weren't so mean all the time."

She flung the car into high gear, which knocked me back against her seats: it sent a shock of pain against the cuts on my back.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't nice of me to drive that way," she said. "Here. Take my hand for a moment. At least you're not really bleeding any more. I'm much stronger than you." She stretched one hand into the back, awkwardly, not trying to grab or hit.

_You shouldn't, you should defy her, she thinks she knows your plans, you can confuse her._ My left hand reached forward. It was like touching a statue. The same frozen granite as Antony's hands, as all of them.

"And probably I weigh more than you too," Alora said. "We're heavy. But you have to go on a walk in the sunlight with one of us sometimes. You'll like what you see there. It's very pretty. When we get back maybe you'll see I have some rainbow crystals in my bedroom, and in the mornings facing east they send shiny little rainbows all over the walls and the floors to welcome in the new day..."

_But I don't think she sleeps._

"And now we're here." Even close it fit in with the landscape. The garden was overgrown like part of a forest, an open patio hung with vines, tall evergreens blooming and berries bright, ivy covering the whole of a large broad house in light brown woods. Deep in the woods. A journey I remembered little of making before. On one corner of the overgrown building I saw a glint of chickenwire in some sort of cage; two tall wide-leaved trees, interlocked with each other, blocked that from sight. Alora tugged on one of her pigtails, corkscrewing the end of it between her fingers. "We're home again. I have to help my sister. I can see...I can see too much. For little Monty, in case he's accidentally stopping me from seeing nice things, I'm going to make sure that he hears you're still okay..."

_Run for it._

Carl-their-enemy. Framing. Someone wanted to let Monty believe Helen killed the man and split the family to deal with werewolves and the one who hated them. The group. Somewhere probably someone else was already dead. There were always bad things happening somewhere else, and if it didn't matter...

Helen Cullen walked through her plants, and gently and slowly the greenery parted to allow her through. Stems and light branches shifted as if a breeze centred on her and her alone happened to follow all her steps. Faint whispers echoed between the trees in the distance, soft as if they were but illusion. She trod on not a single leaf, once more dressed as a gardener, long hair bound behind her neck and glinting in the dawn sunshine.

The inhuman trace was in perfectly smooth skin, too clean and neat over what looked like fine bones, her face covered by the wide brim of a hat outdoors. And it was in the way they moved: swiftness and suppleness impossible to have ever believed human. Something piped like a bird in the silent distance, but nothing like a bird dared to fly near. Pale yellow eyes swam in Helen's face below shadows as she drew closer.

"You can't run away. You need to rest," she said. Alora had driven away. It seemed that I knelt before her. Her glamor wasn't like Bodhi's, almost maternal, insidious in a way I hated. She lied.

I spat at her husband the last time we met.

"I do not fight. I have never wounded a human nor one of the Children of the Moon." She reached out a smooth hand. She smelt of leaves and sap: but below that was something all too sweet to be true.

She let her quiet features turn down as if she wanted to seem melancholy. "I caused Jon to bring us here, and that means the fault is mine," she said. "I had contented memories of this place in the old days. Where we learned that we could eat only beasts. It was beautiful and untouched then and even now much of the forest is intact. Every plant you see here is native to this land. But I'm not going to delay you with a tour of the garden. Come inside to clean up."

She was at least careful and distant over my body, but made it clear there were fangs below her lips. Metaphorically so. None of them seemed to have unusual incisors. I'd tried to escape her.

_It's pointless. I don't do pointless things. She has too many angles. She sounds like a bird but she is not a bird and there is not a bird and no bird dares..._

_Stop it._

"I'd like something for concentration." There was a smoother paste above the stinging disinfectant, white like a picture of wool and greasy as rotting soap. Helen's face did not blur but multiplied itself: reflection after reflection lingered in the air where she had been, rippling as if she stared into water.

"Jon has assembled a pharmacy of his own here. None of it works on us. Close your eyes."

Her face was always still and placid; a blanched rose crossed with a yellow; those yellow eyes set in her face, ghostly pale compared to Bodhi's. I watched her long enough to delude myself it was some sort of resistance—and then let her wipe over those slight cuts there.

Tenths of an inch more before the eyeballs.

"The werewolves went out to defend you. You place them in grave danger and they are children younger than you," Helen said.

"Chase is older than Bodhi." At first a stinging pain above blackness; then it eased away with a damp cloth. The plastic sheet crackled below me.

"In body," said Helen. "Don't look. None of this should run into your eyes, because that would harm a human." Perhaps she should have been proud to think of that. Then suddenly she moved her hand—startled the moment before a door could be heard scraping open. There were heavy weights on the floor, standing there, maybe moving—

I saw through blurred eyes Helen's husband and Veronica. Veronica was tragic and beautiful, standing high like a pillar, polished and elegant. And in her right hand she held by its hair a twitching severed head, the features those of Antony.

Lips twitched and eyes rolled white. It didn't stop trying to move. A colorless substance dripped from the neck. Jagged edges were around fleshlike stuff the same color as his skin. There was a trace of white bone that looked like dull crystal. For a moment the eyes seemed to glare at me; and then went on and on, moving and moving and soundless words coming out of the mouth.

"Bodhi," Jon Cullen said.

"No doubt we will have quite a search for the remaining pieces of the puzzle. Bodhi always had a questionable sense of humor," Veronica said. She laid the head gently down on a chair. It did not stop its movement.

_Because—they say you _can_ live an hour or so after they cut off your head—a row of guillotined heads and one of them winking and gasping and blinking to a doctor—_ Nobody should read things like that. They were bad for you.

"What have they done to her?" Helen backed away.

_What have they done to _him_?_ You would expect the eyes to grow glassy and still instead of rolling piercingly around like unnaturally sharp eggs bulging out of his skull, the mouth to stop trying to sound words out of a throat and lungs that no longer existed.

I always thought Antony seemed a bit of a hothead but not that he'd lose it entirely. That wasn't funny either.

"Place it in a bowl, Helen," Jon Cullen ordered, strangely. The white suit he wore was browned with mud in one or two places. It might as well have been tattered and torn beyond recognition. "Killigan attempts to calm her. Now this slays the treaty with those pups." The voice was still cold enough to stop anyone's breath while he spoke.

"We'll put you back together again, dear," Veronica directed at the head in a large blue-and-white bowl. The eyebrows rose and fell like active caterpillars. She did not seem too distressed. "Remind me to wring that wretched little fortune-teller's fat neck when this is done." I saw a trail of smoke rising from the porcelain. Spots on the floor and chair were eaten away by...whatever dripped from the jagged neck shifting to and fro.

"Does it?" Helen asked gently. "Jon, what has she done?"

"She was enticed." The doctor took out a test tube from a pocket: I saw red scrapings between what looked like mud and grass. He crossed the room to store it in a cold cabinet. "Old acquaintances have discovered a crude form of biological warfare against our own kind. It's quite fascinating."

"And how many killed, Jon?" his wife said.

He didn't answer her but spoke quickly. "Veronica will return with the remainder of Antony's...remains. You will help her mend him."

So even cutting the head off could not harm these. Looking at the wriggling head in the bowl should have driven anyone mad.

Then he continued to speak and Helen stared.

"Surely not..."

"It has been some years since a human was told of us, Helen," he spoke on. And she was very still and neither moved forward nor back as she heard her husband.

They came too close to me. They were cold and they remembered what I had done. A sweater of Antony's covered me, too wide and wrinkled; metal buttons of a belt ran past my fingertips, warm and moist from a human touching them. Jon Cullen spoke again, precise enough to force me to decipher it in time, tracing a maze drawn in frost on bleak fruitless ground.

"Either you will come with your wits, such as they are, intact; or you will come insensible."

"I knew you were going to kill me. I always knew you were going to kill me. If they take you in their car, that's how you know they will kill you. If they tell you anything. Because if they let you see something about what they are, then you have to die at the end of it." They didn't stop me from speaking.

The air outside was cold.

—


	30. Senseless Clay

"They tried to blow you up. They fed on people in Los Angeles."

I was there once with my mother for a few weeks. We travelled on. They couldn't hear me.

"The Moirai," Veronica said, speaking of an island on no maps, "place human prisoners inside cells with no doors. There are open narrow paths by the caves they use as a jail, opening to a vast slippery face of a white cliff above a frothing sea. Their guards step along the paths and play a game: if they can run to one who dares leave their cell before the human throws itself into the waves. In one case in a hundred the human is quick enough to choose their own death.

"You should consider yourself honored to be considered so much of a threat."

A kick this time caught the side of Helen's van. They had me; this was worse; a scream through the electrical tape that muffled my words and stuck my wrists and ankles together, someone noticing the walls of the green van moving wrongly; human sights. It cost a lot to stay out of a gibbering pit, a too-small space, controlled, they could do whatever they wanted and out there someone screamed. Inside here someone screamed.

There were gardening shears still mounted in a toolbox hanging from the van's walls.

Left right and shaking upward on rough ground a bit right left right again slope pebbles—remember, words, ways the van had rushed, a way, any way.

I always missed Veronica no matter how I aimed. I had no control, jerking in a tantrum, the van shaking above sharp pebbles wherever it took left-right-left corners—

Veronica jabbed down a finger on my right hand behind my back and seared a nerve I hadn't thought could be hurt that much. The red-hot pain hit like a sparking wire and radiated up the wrist and past bone, running back through nerves and paralysing like steel scissors heated and stabbing all along there, reaching up to the heart. The world narrowed to the red stars seizing like a spider's pattern of limbs.

Then she'd run away. I was still. Jon Cullen should be in the front, cold as ever. Helen's van ground to a halt; it was dark in the back, though it was light outside. It would be locked like Alora's car—airless walls closing in and something strangling, cold hands shoved inside your mouth. The space shrunk. The walls howled like ghosts, teeth forming in them. And Jon Cullen might be gone but he'd left his eyes behind, his dark eyes, floating in the air away from his body the way that Antony's head still moved and his eyes bulged, watching, always watching, waiting, testing, touching with distant sharp metal and poking and prodding and forcing—

I could not breathe. Nothing was real.

It was black. It was black in a maze. Nothing was black. Clear your head. Because your fears are fears and you've always had to go past them. If you don't you can't breathe at all— The monsters did nothing.

Nothing stopped me shuffling up. Nothing moved or started the van. He'd gone. They must have gone. Let them all go.

One. Two. Three.

Shears. Twist. Cut.

_They forgot that. They must have forgotten her tools. You forget what you're familiar with._

I ripped tape away from my mouth. That could mean there was someone here to scream to. Something. I'd scraped cuts with the edges of the shears; they stung again.

_Get out of here get out of here get out of here. Scream and you won't stop. They'll come back. They are going to kill you. They were always going to kill you._

It was Helen's van, and a small grey key on a simple ring on her dashboard. Her husband hadn't taken it, because it wasn't his van and he was not used to carrying her keys. Trying to use it without keys would have been beyond me—something to do with ripping the wiring, stealing cars is risky—

The immediate memory raced past me. Left right shaking right. Reverse. It was a dirt road outside; there was light in the windows in the front of Helen's van; lonely; there were trees close enough to suffocate and monstrous faces danced between their toothed branches; and above clouds were gathered and the light was not enough.

_Blazing sunlight is supposed to drive away nightmares..._

_Not these._

_Like a crowd of people buffeting from every side and too much light and nowhere to hide._

_Remember remember remember._

I should know the way back. There were new cuts on my wrists, sticky with tape's underside. Many turnings to remember with the fear from each one of them. It wasn't easy. Predictable. Run on foot, but they're much faster. There was a map Erin showed at her club: ridges, hills, contours of land, folded and refolded in heavy neat lines. There were ways. It was too wet for forest fires; if you would not be the first bonfire; they came for blood. I pressed down the fabric of Antony's shirt. Fertiliser, soil-filled pots, tree stakes, hedge clippers, rakes, hoses.

The wheel was slippery and nothing was in the right place.

_...they tried to use a bomb. They weren't very _good_ at it. If they were behind silent in the fumes of the engine, then..._

Then they'd have found me. The world wavered in the windscreen.

Monty's place. Monty's father's fishing beach. Downward.

Contours. Turns. The engine started with a whining jolt. Nothing exploded. It turned quickly, too quickly. Killing yourself by stealing my car— The trees slipped by, and it managed to jolt on the dirt road for a while. Pictures crowded my head like the jagged lines dividing a smashed mirror.

_Someone is dead nobody is dead yet someone has been dead two nights long._ You were supposed to check the fuel, grind the gears, hit the brake. This was too far up. Nobody drove past. Watch for signs. Don't fall asleep at the wheel of dream of the road falling away from everything in a cluster of dirt— That must have been the wrong gear. Fix it.

Then odd gaps and rips in the treeline showed me something had happened. The ground rushed past. You couldn't hear if something chased you on foot, not unless they were right on top of you, not under the noise of Helen's van. I looked in the mirrors—and slowed it.

The brown blurs changed.

Leb, staggering as if he was very dizzy; the little middle-school girl. Fane Clearwater. Looking healthy enough.

"This is the Cullen woman's van. I can smell her on it. And you're wearing their clothes. Who bandaged you up?" she said. "Well, you shouldn't have let him! None of us go to the hospital because we know it's wrong and Chase and Nat did the first-aid course for us wolves and we get on all right. Except nothing's all right, it's not fair, horrible things have happened to Monty and Chase and everyone and he wouldn't let me do anything! Nothing's fair—"

"Fane. I think we should get in," Leb told her. She stamped a foot.

"Fine! He is still human after all. But you can't boss me around just because you're a boy, Lebegue William! And alpha wolves don't even exist in real life and that's not fair either, it's not fair that Monty gets to tell us what to do when he speaks like _that_, and I hate it, and none of this is fair, and I hate it all! So hurry up and move the car already, because I can run much faster than this!"

"They're...alive," Leb said, more coherently. "All of them are alive. But she got them. Bad."

_Of course she did_. No need to ask who he meant. No doubt a dead pallid face and grey hands suddenly shaped like claws—

"Monty made Fane stay back. And me to protect her. I'm not quite myself..."

"Which still isn't fair," Fane interjected, "I'm the biggest wolf of all of us! He should have let me fight. Nothing's fair and nothing's right and nothing's working, and I want...I want... He can pick up Monty and the others, can't he?" she said, turning to Leb. "I can't help them because of the stupid dumb voice and you can't help because you're being stupid and dumb and staying with me, but he can! If some stupid vampire doesn't eat him first. And if Mrs Cullen's stupid van works right."

"I..."

_Don't want to drive into hungry cold ones. Have had enough._

_I like Monty._

"My mom's got a van like this and I bet I can drive it better than you," Fane said, grabbing at the wheel. "Go that way! Leb doesn't have any better ideas so you have to. They're all hurt, I felt them bleed!"

She looked unsettled; tried to shake it off herself.

"Are you human or not? If you're human you help us or else you're on _their_ side, and that's _wrong_," Fane said. Everything must be either right or wrong to her. She yelled and she couldn't see anything but what she wanted. I didn't know what I wanted; she made it swing to the right. "They're monsters and they will eat you anyway. Now go that way. Me and Leb have to get off when you're too close, but if the cold ones come this way—"

"Then you're not allowed to fight them with just me, Fane," Leb said wearily.

"Don't be such a stupid, stupid fraidy-cat!" Fane tantrumed. "I felt it too and they're not going to rip apart anyone else again! Not anyone! I can feel my mom at her work and _she's_ safe, she's going to be safe. She's my first imprint and she's got to be okay."

Leb's eyes rolled in his head; the van nearly surged off the road. Fane helped correct it. The moment when she hesitated was done with.

"You're a crappy stupid driver! Do it right and get the others back home! You have to go to the other side of—"

She told me where Monty had fought. Probably where Jon had gone. Fane's chin and bottom lip twitched.

"It _hurts_ if you get too close to the stupid alpha chief commands, it's so stupid! Leb, get off with me and we're gonna patrol the border here, and then we're gonna make Monty say the _right_ things!"

I wondered if they were going to jump out like Antony—but Fane pulled on the brakes.

"I'll put a secret Injun blood curse on you if you _don't_!" she yelled.

"That's what you yell at all the tourists, Fane..."

"No," I said. Fane's head ripped around, thick matted brown hair falling around her face. "They're not interested in Monty and your friends. If you want to kill one—then he's gone to find Helen."

"The murderer..." Leb said.

"Helen had dark eyes when I saw her. She could have lied; she's a liar; she's—there are other ones out there. _Less_ dangerous than Bodhi, they bothered to—"

Talking too much. Some things were true and they came together.

"Tell someone where I am?"

"Only if you drive up and get Monty and the others out," Fane snapped back.

"So you've said. If I do it then it's because I wanted to—" It was easier to drive on than be still. The trees rolled beyond the windows. The van puffed and swayed.

Upwards must have tilted it back. Left again. You should go faster. Or slower. That's less dangerous in a large heavy moving object. Trees raced past, swaying and whispering, green and grey. You should be able to see giant bloodied wolves in the woods.

The road moved up. It was too far to reach for the gearbox. It shouldn't be necessary to move, but it was and it ached. I squinted to read the fuel. I shouldn't have to do that; it was only fast-moving screens that were bad. My hands were sweating; they slipped off the wheel. It was only speeding up over jagged pitch-black holes in the road. The trees were moving.

_What do you do if visions stop you from seeing the road?_

_Second-guess them. Slow down._

I lifted away from the gas pedal. The world in front of Helen's windscreen slowed to a crawl, slow as walking.

That was probably why I was still alive after it hit a tree.

"_Wake up, mousie, wake up._"

"_He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone_._ At his head a grass-green turf and at his feet a stone._"

"_There are those who know and those who have too much shattered glass in their heads to know. Is it glass for you? We are marble, so it must be glass._"

There was a spiderweb on the windscreen, a glass spiderweb with no spider to catch flies. A white-barked peeling tree, like parts of skin ripped and held open. I was wrapped around the steering wheel. Hot bruises filled me and there was nothing that would have been better but falling into darkness and quiet and being allowed to stay asleep where there was no pain.

_Monty._

_You can't even rescue yourself._

_There's another kind of dark inside._

"_Get up, get up, sweet rotting meat, the growing flies by night_," another said. I wasn't alone. She perched on the other part of the van, where both doors of the back were ripped open and twisted apart. As if the accident had done that. She was a statue paused to spring away.

Dark brown hair fell in tangles around her face. I'd not seen her before nor wanted to. In shadows she was dark, but her hands were a lighter brown. Her loose brown shirt was patched and dirty and she wore a long skirt that seemed not to stop her walk. She paced the metal of the van, one side to another, and moved like a snake. There was still grey light through the windows, but none of it reached her. She raised her head and her eyes were purple-black. Then when she ran her fingers to turn her hair back from her face they were crimson.

_There is_, I told myself, _a known medical condition. Of a simple variation in human features._ The word itself floated up past aches and exhaustion.

Except nothing of the way she moved was in any way human.

"Why are you...talking?" I said.

"O sister, sister, the blood smells sweet," she said. Bare feet danced below the folds of her skirt. "O sister, sister, stay your hand. O fair false sister of cold white sand. Woe to the false, woe to the wise, woe to the predictable."

And then she took up the shears and licked the blades one at a time, her tongue scraping along the metal and without a sign that it cut her mouth open. They were clean and unbloodied of all the small drops when she put them down.

"You smell tasty," she said, "and of course you must be wrong. I know all the experiments and all the tricks. All of them. Has he taught you? It does not matter. If I know what is not real they cannot find me, not by midnights or under the moon. In living nightmares he comes."

I tried to move my arms. It was a slow, grating pain that almost forced everything else out. When I breathed in, my ribs blocked my lungs. "Friend of Carl."

"No, to know the experiments and all the tricks means that the taste is beware," the woman said to herself. "I think I will give you up afterward. He will not resist you."

"What do they call you?" She was creeping closer. I rested a hand on the door, which seemed jammed over itself. She didn't sound any better pieced together than I was. Her right hand touched the van's sides and casually resculpted some of its metal into a small globe on the wall.

"I am a woman, and what has he done to me?" she said, and her words seethed like an off-colored stream of bad water. Like the smell of sulfur. Being inhuman made her different and very wrong. "Poured glass and ribbon like water inside. I have been wronged. Are you a trap or a trick or a trick that he has trapped for me?"

_As if_, I thought, _creatures like you are hurt._ They were hard and smooth and without pain. For that moment it made me see the attraction of what they were.

She sounded a little like Alora, perhaps. A shaft of green-grey light filtered through leaves caught her bloodied eyes again; it was only in a few lights they were clear. When she lifted her long wide right sleeve it was stained by dark wet drops. As if she'd wielded a weapon or sharp nails to cut someone open already not too long ago.

"Can you see what's going to happen too? You're the wrong color. The wrong colors. That's not what I mean." I breathed again, once. "You're mad. A mad vampire. But being mad doesn't stop you thinking of things. Or executing them. Or still outsmarting them."

She moved so fluidly it was impossible to track her one moment to the next; and my hand tightened on the door handle. _Press it down and stumble out and escape until._ Her sleeves were stained; Antony's sleeves over my wrists the same.

She came much closer and her eyes were bright in a perfectly smooth face. "Then that is why he keeps you," she said—and her voice, like Helen's, sounded British. "You would make me see all the worlds Carl says aren't real, if I fed. And that tells me what I must do—"

The door opened with my weight on it; I stumbled out and felt the grass below. But then she was behind me. Her touch was too hard, too close. She bruised black. Then the vampire flew across the ground.

And the four of them were waiting. Alora's high voice talking swiftly to Bodhi's brother. The one with the beard standing, staring with that constipated look on his face at Bodhi beside him. There was dark drying red on her face and shoulders, and when she slowly looked up her eyes were the wrong color entirely.

There was a fifth in the clearing, but she lay huddled and far away from the other things. Bark had scraped along my hands.

There was a rip across my back and a shock of pain when she dropped me. Then a kick where part of the bandages had been. It started bleeding again. Crawling, smelling of blood. The vampire faced up to Alora and Killigan and—

Did something. They stopped. Statues standing there. But Bodhi shifted from side to side. She stared at me; she crouched as if she was about to spring and jump and feed. Bloodied lips moved in her dirty face: they could not feed delicately or nicely or simply with human teeth. It would be messy. I gave up to the fear.

She looked at me, strange scarlet eyes beaded with blood. Bodhi paused—and shook her head and ran away as she'd done across the gym roofs, too fast to follow, but whether she meant to come back behind it would be clear soon enough—

And I saw the other vampire leap on Jon Cullen and try to separate his head from his neck.

They moved too quickly to follow. Alora's lips were moving, whispering something to herself, but her golden eyes were blank. Killigan clutched his own head but otherwise was still. I breathed and there was still blood. If your arms move that means they can move, if your legs move that means they can move, stop it and stop them and it _hurts_.

Jon Cullen tried to step back from the other vampire. She had succeeded in scratching him, damaging him—he stood shorter than her and no longer so immaculate in white, trying to speak coldly.

He raised his hands, facing her. He knew her. "Your powers have increased since you left, Adelaide. I would sooner destroy a precious vase."

"Destroy your experiments. Destroy everything of you. You will burn," she promised; then she hit out and he flew back, and she stood above him although he rolled aside. Green grass and mud clung to his back.

"Experiment," I heard him say, "my sixteenth failed experiment. Failed. You...have already lost—"

There was the other shape behind the vampires. She was dead. Human flesh was marked and bruised and soft where she lay, so very soft and broken. She'd been a woman, utterly still, brown eyes open and sightless and bulging from her face. She was nobody I had ever seen before. Her throat was a ruin in dried dark blood and she lay down like the deer. There are people who run away and there are people who are thrown away, where nobody from the surface world mind what happens to them, and I was never like that because I always had someone and she had me. I'd tried to crawl away from them; I watched her. Sooner or later ants would crawl in her eyes. She looked still warm but there was no breath left in her, the head the wrong angle. Needle-marks traced the insides of her wrists, some scrapes long and deep and not healed at all by time.

Alora in the car in the dark fighting not to kill. I didn't try to wake the other two. Adelaide and Jon crashed against each other, again and again and again, and it looked as if she chased him and kept him trapped here.

"Helen," I said aloud, and Jon Cullen heard that easily.

"Carl," he spoke, trying to break away from the other again. "He will not harm my wife. Think of healing by my later experiments. Think of what we will do to you. Think that you cannot—"

"No," Adelaide said, "I am glass." And the two of them ran, him trying to leave and her stopping him, beating him. I did not wait to see the outcome.

_It hurts. Let me rest._

There were grey clouds overhead; there had been for a while. There were no sounds that seemed to belong to human beings. You were supposed to use the sun to know directions; that wasn't possible. I couldn't find the road.

_Try to stop the bleeding again. It hurts._

I stopped walking and let a tree hold my weight. Press the clothing against the vampire's work. Adelaide. Carl. The white.

Lurch toward a human road; escape; or at least leave a trace of what was here. Let their own side punish them for carelessness with human prey. Leb said as much that was what happened to vampires who were not invited. The trees pressed in. You could rest a hand on them for support, or trip over roots and scrape yourself. There were still spider-web cracks in a world that did not fit together.

Then, a wolf howled.

—

A/N: Occasional borrowings made from Hamlet and the Quiller-Couch Book of English Verse.


	31. Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun

"Monty."

He was in a clearing, a red wet mess and gleaming wet parts falling out of him. But he was still moving, twitching. He wasn't alone. I should not have come.

_Run_, I told myself, but I was stumbling over my legs.

"—little _puppy_ that's all you are fucking little puppies and I ripped and tore you to pieces—" a soft, high voice whispered. The wolf howled—then a human shape thrust out of it, curled up over itself, and instead of a howl there came a low panting cry.

"Fuck you. Bitch. Die in a fucking fire."

She kept talking. "...and little boys shouldn't play with matches, little boys should play with themselves, sniffing around Maggie Fentan's panties, you think I don't have a sense of smell too, did I punch your nose too hard, poor baby puppy? Tell your pack you lose, you lose everything, gonna roast you on a spit and make you people eat dead dog, gonna tear you apart and beat you with your own leg bones, gonna pluck out your eyes and swallow them like apples, little Monty, I don't play nice with puppies, but fuck you, fuck the freak too, you see how nice I'm being? Look at your friend, little Monty, look at him before he gives up and faints on my altar, it's not a hunt if the prey lays itself belly-up for you, that's what you were, fourteen seconds for three wolves, feel as fucking pathetic as you are? Alora begs Jon for puppies that nobody wants to eat, you're begging for a leash, a dwarf's more your type you could stand a chance with, not me, not even on the best day of your life—"

_She is drunk._ She rested there, crouched like a cat, whispering her obscenities to him as he writhed on the ground—not obscene because of the language so much as what she spoke of doing. _Drugged. Drunk._ Then she started to sing.

"Oh, come out, come out, wherever you are, come out or be dragged and eaten..."

I spoke. I'd dropped to the ground, and getting up felt impossible. "The woman's dead. What did you do to her?"

She tilted her head to the left, blood on her face. "Took her to the top of the Grand Canyon and watched her try and fly. Lost her in the woods with a trail of breadcrumbs. Put her on a high-wire trapeze and set the safety net on fire. Ate her, of course. I think her name was Emma. You've always asked stupid questions, haven't you, boy? Aren't you going to run away and make it that slightest bit harder to finish you?"

"Treaty...broken. Die, bitch," Monty promised. He lay there, human and huddled over himself. There was blood in his mouth, and he spat on the ground. He kept trying to pull himself up.

_I don't know what to do. I don't know what I could do._ I looked down at my hands over a large root. Then I saw him change, back to a wounded wolf that twisted around itself and then fold into a human again. Two fingers were missing from his right hand; part of the wolf's paw had been gone. He held the hand into his chest.

"The treaty says you're not allowed to kill people. Did Adelaide guide your hand to do it?" I said, and tried not to make that sound too much like an insult she was childish.

Sometimes she was childish. Sometimes she was old. The scarlet in her eyes was perhaps brighter than Adelaide's. She watched.

Perhaps it was something like perfume in a car for her, and if it wasn't there was nothing that could be done.

"Adelaide slit her throat and you drank her blood because you couldn't resist," I said. Alora and Jon—almost—said so; it made you believe Alora's gifts.

There was so much more around her face than Adelaide—but a lot of that would have been Monty and his friends. My stomach churned as I saw him on the ground. He glared at me. If I ran it would hurt worse; if I ran she would chase; she was already paused to spring. The truth was I couldn't do anything.

"You must be full by now. She painted you with blood because she thought you were strong." I heard myself speaking fast and thin and higher than usual. "What a joke—"

Too much of a risk.

"You don't want to know how strong I am," she accused, "I ripped Antony apart and hid his pieces, I have duelled the strongest guards of the Moirai and won, I have killed Children of the Moon across the sea, I have hunted the Teeth of the North, set fire to most of our kind in this country, reduced the population in ways that cow could never object to—human hunts are boring, puppy hunts just as easy—little Monty, grow up to be killed properly—" she purred. He tried to interrupt. "Nothing is hard when I can't stop hearing your thoughts. Where you'll run to. What you care about—what you love the most. What you're about to do.

"Except for one..." she taunted.

"If you kill me you'll never know why." Grey shadows covered her but could not disguise her bloodied dirty face. I might have lied to myself but Monty was changing. Not bleeding as quickly as before but still moving; and though two fingers were missing on a human hand there was a line of pinker skin in the gap that almost looked new and longer than before. The blood from the wolf was spattered much further in the clearing than any human had a right to hold inside them, by torn flesh and fur.

The air was pale as the clouds and a bleary film covered my eyes. It was too hard to see clearly. I couldn't blink it away.

Bodhi said: "That fucking cow. It is, of course, all her fault."

_Mist_, I thought. _It's too much. Alora all but promised we had lost that by driving away._

Mist chased and tainted with blood. It fed on blood. White dust in the air: and a wolf howling once more.

But this time it blended with the blood of the woman called Emma. Bodhi flailed—she split deep cuts into treetrunks and sounded like cracks of thunder—and something invisible pained her. Monty watched with something close to satisfaction.

_But she can't be yours. She can't be yours or Leb would have known._

Red and white gathered around Bodhi's face. It covered her eyes.

_Jon is away and Helen is away and she is on her own._ I saw a collapsing tree, the branches close enough to smell of leaves and sap. It fell by Monty as if there was a rushing storm, and he rolled aside—there was a wolf in his place, howling in pain, though I saw only the tip of dark fur. I should have rushed away from the earthquakes and the sound of everything falling down. But trying to rise sent crashing waves through me and it was as if I only put myself in the way of it all coming down. I saw through fallen black branches like the bars of a cell.

The white dust didn't open her up. It crept inside her on the blood she'd drunk. She'd have the cutting dust in her eyes—painful, if they could feel pain at all, and I'd seen it and felt it over my own eyes. Winds rose like a rushing storm, whether the vampire flailing at something she couldn't fight at all or the mists themselves venting their pain. Wildly Bodhi swayed like a birch branch flying on the winds. I put out a hand to cling to branches of a fallen tree and felt it real.

_She wants Bodhi dead._

_She wants to _be_ Bodhi._

_I don't care._

The threads tied themselves together. I wasn't screaming in pain—or drunk—or suspended like a statue—or as mad as Adelaide. And I had seen the three sides of it all.

_She wants to be saved._

_She won't kill Monty. She ignored Leb. She'll ignore werewolves. They can't be eaten._

_She's crawling inside._

And so I made myself bleed again.

Bodhi jerked forward then forced herself back, as if something inside tried to control her to drink. When it happened it happened too quickly for any thoughts, only watching and trying to sort flashing images in the mind later, let it be much later—

The dust pooled around the fresh blood that dripped down on the leaves, and again the droplets swirled strangely in the air and gained an odd sort of life—

And Bodhi took out the crystal lighter and raised it into the swimming white dust. It exploded like a flour bomb with leaping purple fire and smoke.

Air rushed past me and I thought it hadn't killed me. _Monty—_ Something rough scraped against my flailing left hand, and it stung with ripped skin. It was cold, and it was very fast. Enough time to notice Bodhi's dark hair, sticky with blood, flying past the wind.

Soon she flung me down in Helen's garden in the middle of green ferns that smelt like a strong aniseed. She lay over me, cold and heavy and unbreakable, and her eyes were marked with cuts over irises and pupils. She would be blind. I tried to fling her off.

"Almost makes us even," she said, staring beyond my head. _So they can be hurt to the eyes—_ "I save your ass once, you distract it for me to save mine..."

And she leaned down, red-eyed. I thrashed in fear.

"What," she said, pinning both arms to the ground, "think I'm going to lick it up from your nose? Along with snot? You're disgusting."

"Odly a dosebleed. 'Elt 'ike a dood idea at the time."

I heard her speak again, making bloodied lips smile as if she did not care about her eyes. "Don't worry. I'll only kill you when I know I want to."

She stood away from me and ran. There were other sounds here. I pressed the bridge of my nose back together, trying not to look at the back of my hand. Nosebleeds get quite a lot of blood without cutting anything open and are easy enough to stop. It had been a better idea for a distraction than trying to slit a vein.

_The wolves_, I thought; _Helen. Carl._ Perhaps back in the woods Adelaide had won—or Jon had thought of something. He was cold, so very cold.

I slipped my hand under my arm to kill some of the stinging pain. Bodhi was filthy with it and I was nearly as much. They drained you. They made your head spin into nowhere. I saw a great dark blur and knew that giant wolf—larger than any of the others by at least a head, or three—must have been Fane, trying to slay another of them. Fane Clearwater, talking about her mother and Indian curses and yelling about monsters.

_A little girl. I didn't mean to._

And there were vines rising in the air like wire tentacles. They reached and coiled. Fear clenched at me, overwhelming—I couldn't run away if my head swam like this—and it was like that time not far from the graveyard, tree bark scraping at fingernails. A man—too swift to be a man—with a large black trenchcoat danced, fair-haired above it. He half-turned, and his chest was not human at all and made of a mass of growing vines. Alien, you'd say—chthonic—like you'd react to a person with body parts so swollen they couldn't get up, like a problem left too long to turn black and run with fluids. You should look away. The mass of vines snaked out to pinion those he fought.

There was Helen the gardener with half her red-gold hair hanging down. Another wolf snapped at the other vampire. But Helen plunged her right hand into his chest—gripped the plants and changed them. Twisted them. He struck around himself with a hand like a claw and the dark orange wolf howled, getting in the way of the large one. His own vines wrapped around him and Helen did not stop.

Then he shrieked like something dying and ran, and she did not chase him. And the wolves stopped too as if that victory was enough. The large one spat out something between her teeth that had the look of a broken statue's hand.

_Let it be over_, I asked, and tried to attract no attention. A fire burned on my back and I closed my eyes to try and make it all go away.

Stone hands shook my shoulder roughly. I looked up. It was Antony standing there—looking surprisingly together—a lot more together than the last time. All of his limbs in place. Dressed well enough.

"There is no need to feign sleep. You will watch. So much of this was risked for your cowardly life." His eyes were a cold black now—short-tempered and dangerous as gauze next to a lit match. He pulled me across the garden.

Monty stood there as a human, smoke-blackened, holding himself together. He was healing. He'd lived through the blast. His friends were all around him. I dared to look down at his hand and saw only the top fingerjoints missing. Fane was by him in a tattered floral sundress: and she too was scratched and hurt. I looked away.

_I never wanted to be the sort of man who harms women._

Adelaide was held one arm apiece by Veronica and Killigan. Her tangled brown hair fell over her face again, and she glared at her captors, her eyes darkened now. She caught sight of me—or scent—and jerked forward, baring white teeth, but they restrained her. Alora stood by watching over her. Jon faced her, Helen not too far from his left hand. Not far from them a banked fire bloomed heavy with the thick smell of fresh leaves.

Jon stepped forward and reached to Adelaide's face, though he did not touch her. "You were meant, once, to defend against my sister's mental powers. She has her weaknesses. Minds who think in Kapampangan. Sleeping minds. Drugged minds. You were dosed with a potent compound of hallucinogens before your turning and survived the process. You fled. You learned to replicate the substances that affected you in the blood of a human. You learned to use your incoherence against gifts such as those of Alora and Killigan. I am impressed, Adelaide."

She hissed at him, struggling forward to bite him, and said: "You're the worst monster of us, Jon Icarus. May your wings always break as you have broken others."

"Through my wife I am a changed man," he said, smooth as cream. "I control myself. You have murdered humans for no other reason than to sate your appetite or secure a pointless revenge. And it is for these reasons you will be executed before the Quileute tribe."

Jon gave a signal, and I saw Fane Clearwater raise her arm and fling a light-skinned hand to the fire. It dripped a pale liquid like Antony's head and the fire immediately caught to that, devouring as if the substance was gasoline. Light purple smoke billowed across the garden, growing at every moment, consuming the hand into dust and ashes in the middle of flames the same color.

And then the others descened over Adelaide. I did not look away. The sounds were marble ripped apart and grinding against itself. She screamed while they did it, cursing Jon Cullen until they took apart her throat. Rectangles of an arm like a branch for firewood. And her head stared with egg-white eyes as Antony's head had done, before the flames took that. The smoke was thick and acid and blocked some of the sight of it, and I had to cough and blink it out of my eyes. I watched her killed.

As the woman in the forest. They don't count if they're monsters.

"We took off our trophy from her partner," Monty said. "We'll take that he wanted your group dead. He won't come back unless he wants more pieces gone missing. And the bitch helped blow up the other one. Over me."

And Bodhi stepped forward. She had cleaned herself up: her skin was grey and unstained, pale-lipped without makeup, her hair shining smooth, black jeans and shirt new and neat, and in place of high heels solid boots. She watched as if there was nothing wrong with her sight any more. She carried a naked sword—old-fashioned like an illustration from a book, longer than her thigh. I saw a bone-white blade, the hilt bound by a strange white blue-tinged fur that almost seemed to glow in the dying light, one edge of the sword sharpened and the other serrated like a saw. But those were pointed teeth fastened to it, surely—teeth from some animal. Or person. Monty did not challenge her on that.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," she complained again. "Let me do your dirty work, Monty. I'll chase Carl down. And it gets me out of here."

_She's done with. It's over_, I thought, and the flames were dying down and there were only ashes in the fire.

"Let me go," I said, because Antony laid a hand on my shoulder again. "To the hospital again, I guess. Then sleep. I didn't—" I looked at Leb, who looked away. "Mean to hurt you. Or Fane. I didn't know."

"Damn too much of that," Monty growled, and I hadn't expected the anger that showed in his face. "You rescued the bitch. You don't count as human."

"—Monty, please, I didn't mean to—there were both of them—I didn't cause the fire. Take me with you. You have to take me with you. For God's sake don't leave me here with them."

"Wimp. You'd stab us in the back again because you were scared. We don't have to protect humans who betray us," he said.

"It's your injuries, boy," Jon Cullen said coldly from above. "A mental delusion about werewolves and vampires should not be substantiated with injuries that show no signs of self-infliction."

"Then fake those. You're the doctor. You have to let me go. Monty, listen, we used to be friends, you helped me once. Please don't." I said more. His friends only watched him and then I started to beg them the same. Antony laid a hand on my back as if he wanted to know more about what had happened—

"Our treaty depends upon humans of both sides remaining ignorant," Jon said as if he was reminding them of something, and I kept promising that I wouldn't tell anyone; I hadn't told about the time in the dark at Hallowe'en or about Chase and Anova—

"You know what'd happen if the government got its hands on us?" Monty finished with. "Lock us up and cut us up. Like you care. I'll see if there's a way that your father won't worry too long—because he deserved better than you. Leech-rescuer. Come on, guys."

I spoke more; sped up into incoherent pleading; begging for another chance and beating the ground, not trying to stop myself from moving, opening cuts and hitting bruises.

"My father searched for me before and he'll do it again..."

Monty and his friends never turned back.

Another cold hand held me down again.

"Oh, you shouldn't be too harsh on little Monty," Alora said, "because he was only afraid of Bodhi—"

She was small. And she was very close. I thrashed out to hit her. Antony grabbed my wrist and squeezed it too tightly. "You have no right to do that," he said, and the words almost came to me that so many other people only gave you orders and did things to you because they knew you'd try to fight and fighting would be worse—but there was nothing left. The girl with the pink pigtails stared and waited. Antony's twist made me walk up and inside, the third time, the plastic sheeting still over the sofa and the bowl Helen used for the head lying on the ground, the tall white walls that closed in too far, the flight of stairs further in and down. There were moments of stinging things poured across the cuts and a cold hand testing the bruises. They touched no matter what I asked for.

Then there was a pitch-black room with a door that locked on the outside. I scratched and scraped and flung myself against it. I screamed. And then I lay there on the floor, passing into the dark for a long time.

When Helen entered and brought light with her, I let her pretend to comfort me.

—


	32. Madhouse

It was a room with no windows. A fluorescent light ran along the high ceiling. The walls were a light blue, except where I'd chipped away at the paint with fingernails and stained the edges. A bed, made; a small plastic set of drawers with dulled edges.

"Wash your hands. It's warm water."

And slightly floral-scented. This wasn't like a prison. Closer to a psych ward—seeming comfortable but not—and she was no nurse. It was very quiet and cold in here. The walls must block sound. I didn't know what time it was, and suddenly that seemed very important.

But I was not going to give her the satisfaction of asking. She wore a plain watch under her long sleeve, and if she angled her arm in the right way—it was eleven o'clock and either morning or evening. Helen put down her tray.

"This room was designed for our kind," she said. "One of us could break it down, given time, but by that time we should not want to. An isolation from any scent or reminder of humans or any disturbance from outside. We take steps to break ourselves from human blood."

She had also brought a glass of water and pills she said were from her husband. You'd fear his experiments; you'd fear all of them; you'd fear losing your mind entirely. High cliffs or worms crawling under graves—the smell of too many people pressed together and trying not to escape—waiting and waiting in the dark. Using your mind to escape would be no good.

_How long?_

_And what after?_

_And who else keeps the keys?_

The water fizzed with dissolving medicines. The bruises were yellow-green-black and it all still ached. Vivid, sickly patchwork like I'd been torn apart and sewn together with rusted needles. For all I longed for water I reached for the human food first.

"I baked bread with my own hands when I was human," Helen said. "They all liked it then. But all the people I offer it to now say it is too dry. It never comes right."

There was jam on it. It was fresh and not inedible. Helen's hands were unnaturally still in her lap, and she sat on the bed and waited patiently.

"The preserve comes from the native fruits. This one is beach strawberry, boiled in springtime. Perhaps I overcook it; nobody ever seems to truly like it when I bring it to work. At least it is better to use the natural fruits of a place than import dangerous weeds." She was growing talkative.

It wasn't good to waste food. They could have force-fed if they wanted. A sip of the water did not seem to have sudden side effects.

"You care about the environment. And tried to make Carl part of it," I suggested. Tentacles were planted in him and the thought of his chest moving with plants almost made me clutch at my own. "If that's his real name. And you said you'd never harmed anyone."

"Any human. Nor any Child of the Moon. Carl is and was always a predator..." Helen stood. "That does not pardon my sin. There is no pardon for our kind. We can only try to pay the debt in other ways. It is a long story and not one for the ill. Tell me what you need now as a human."

The door was locked on the outside, without a keyhole. The bottom of it was inset; it blocked all but a tiny thread of air to the outside.

_Slow. Carefully._

A lightswitch that would leave it in complete darkness. I hadn't found it while screaming. And the thought kept coming of trapped forever, trapped until they kill you. The lights were cold and bright enough to not be real.

Four otherwise bare walls. There was nothing inside the plastic drawers but three books, old and yellowed as you'd expect from old creatures of the night, printing off-centred. The bindings weren't hard enough to scrape against anything. If you ripped out paper and moistened it you could block that tiny current of air from the door, and suffocate faster; or set the paper on fire and let the smoke take care of it, a warm fire...

I thought of Adelaide.

An iron-framed bed bolted to the floor, paint overlaying that. Bedsheets are flammable. And possible to use with a hook on the wall.

The body in the woods without a throat. If I were Jon I'd hide a second murder. Perhaps he burned her too. Though that wasn't easy, I thought I knew from texts—human bodies should be dissolved with acid rather than burned, because the bones and flesh didn't go so easily.

An old-fashioned china...container. Smash that or the water glass and attack the walls.

If I ran hands along the walls there were some dents and bends, as if something very strong had struck and broken. The paint was over a metal of some sort. I tapped carefully. All four walls; door; and on the floor you could tell the sound was wrong by walking.

Then I looked up at the ceiling and realized the stupidity of not thinking of it.

It was reachable if you stood on the bedhead, but you couldn't balance there and hit. I took out one of the plastic drawers and swung up the extra length. The sound was metallic—but perhaps it was weaker there, that's the most obvious weak point—

Hit. It clanged. The swing was awkward and painful. Do it again. There was an edge to the plastic and it dented the paint. Keep trying.

Joints and openings are weak points. There are wooden puzzle boxes, where one part is slightly different to the rest in a way you can't tell at a glance or where a drawer's hidden in space you would swear was filled already—where the grain is off as a clue or where pressing it makes it move. I tried the door and the door's joining with the drawer for a club. None of them came back, and perhaps they couldn't hear through the thick walls or thought it would be of no use—

I wasn't strong enough. A burst of lunacy and ignoring it, no more. I sat on the floor. Check your mind and know it's still your own. Jon Cullen poured things into you. He did it to Adelaide and that made him a worse monster. I closed my eyes and let the fluorescent lights beat on.

_Or Monty will rescue me after all. He was only saying it so they wouldn't attack him_, I thought._ The vampires are more powerful—older—but they can live through things too, they're stronger than humans, they're fast. I can think of at least two ways they could attack here. As long as Alora didn't figure it out. Holes in her powers. Holes in all of them. Holes in someone's skin and bones, stop it, stop it—_

_I'll escape. Or they'll kill me. I could make them._

_I'm not strong enough yet. I don't want to wait._

I ran a hand across my face and the forming scabs there. _Sleep and tell yourself it's not giving up._ It came almost too easily, but none of my dreams showed anything that I wanted to see.

I scratched at the edge of bandages, looked up at the blue ceiling, and thought of being bored. Words could spool through your head which took you away. One past story about wallpaper and being trapped, yellow instead of light blue—the yellow. There's a woman in a nailed-down bed who stares at the paper, and it changes every day and keeps on changing. The point is that you don't know if the woman's mind is gone or if her husband is trying to murder her slowly or if the paper is real and there is something very wrong with the world. Or all three.

It was only Helen who would come. Sometimes she'd walk me inside the house, where thick windows opened to daylight or night. They pretended to be human—must once have allowed construction crews to build this and question their choices. She was a nurse; it hurt and didn't heal in a day or two, and I told myself to rest. Everything was too quiet.

Fling yourself out through a glass window—if she did not stop you or it did not cut you to death. I didn't try that. Yet.

She spoke softly and slowly. "You should be healing. Is there enough to occupy you?"

"Do you agree with everything your husband does?"

"I think Bodhi mentioned you were a reader. Perhaps I should leave more books," Helen said, looking through as if it was all made of glass. Some glass was made in the light opaque yellow of her eyes—then boiled and warped it so it couldn't be seen through.

"You wrote about death in your book."

She answered that one.

"So I did."

Sometimes I'd been bored enough not to stare at the blue paint—but the lights beat too hard to think. "Foxe's Martyrs. History of the Scottish Reformation. On the State of the Dead and of the Resurrection. Did you want me to find a theme?"

"They're mine," she said. "Jon's reading matter is abstruse and rather technical. Veronica's alike, and most of the others rarely read. I have works on ecology and the local environment as well. Theology can be a comfort." Her voice hardly changed pitch or speed.

"Theology should say you shouldn't exist."

"Yes." Then she said more, though still as slowly, as if she wanted to explain it. "I believe we lack souls. I believe we are eternally separated from divine grace. I believe that the most we can do is to reduce harm."

_Then you should not have come here. I've seen more of my own blood lately than I hope I ever see again...which may be _unlikely_..._

"Then you don't want to treat me like the one you killed or the one you tortured?" I lost control of my voice. "This is a madhouse. It's a madhouse. You should kill me sooner rather than later. It's waiting that's just as bad. I can't..."

"Everything changes in time," Helen said, and placed a cold hand on my shoulder. "An apology would be meaningless; but I promise to listen to you..."

_Soulless monster. Rotted liar._ Or I could have tried to hit her—not that it would have hurt her.

"A pen. Would you let me have a pen?"

—

It could be very dark alone in here. Not a crack of light showed, even under the doorway. I knew the numbers of steps: eight by twelve, even. If day by day it shrunk I'd know that. I'd stepped out and followed the walls until I knew it all by heart. And sat down on the bed to wait.

_This is what it is like to be trapped in the dark. Know it. Prepare._

In the dark dreams and nightmares floated up like soap bubbles, like the colors in grease on top of dirty water. Behind your closed eyes you could still convince yourself of color, pressing fingers into eyeballs. And there were dreaming colors, where nobody can take what doesn't exist.

_I remember being alone in the dark. Waiting. She always came back._

It was always cold here. They lost human warmth.

This counted as being ill. I'd slept too much—felt pain when I lifted my right arm—brushed at scabs and felt yellow-green bruises. Some of it felt like a fever. But I could think, I told myself.

There were times when I was sick; everyone is sometimes. She didn't blame me for it. She couldn't make it stop hurting because nobody could, but she stayed and never went away. Being there was enough to make it feel better.

_It hurts. Make it stop hurting, Mom, please._

_I wish I could but I can't_, she'd say, but comfort me by staying. A ghostly hand paused across my forehead.

_Don't go._

_I wouldn't if I could help it. But I promise I'll come back; because I always do, don't I?_

Something echoed in the room, as all sounds did in a small space. I traced the folds of a blanket, wrapping it around my shoulders.

_No matter what Helen thinks will happen I will never return to this place alive._

I stared into the dark and thought I heard brushings like wind around. Hollows whispered, but unless the door opened nobody would be pacing where I could see nothing. They could decide to never open the cage again. I held a hand close to my face and tried to see fingers.

_I can live with the dark._

I got up; I couldn't tell how long it had been. Long enough. Turned on the fluorescent light to see what I was doing. The pen was heavy and one of those expensive ones made from silver-colored metallic stuff. I twisted it open, and used the slender bits to help me start to pry open the light switch and see what lay behind.

I was careful. Detaching the wires would make it go dark. I coaxed it away from the wall—it was screwed to something below—and the lights still guided me. Red and blue and grey wires were tied together, in a hollow. A hole. A loophole.

Enough slack to look. You'd wire a whole house together—one part connected to the other—and there was a thick silver box in there mounted on insulation. The power. And beyond it was nothing. Nowhere to reach through and grab somewhere beyond the room.

I knew above trapped below the paint a plastic-coated wire ran up to the lights and that between them, too high to reach without a drawer slanted on its side, they were joined to each other and nothing else. There wasn't a way out. I grasped the wires.

My hands slipped, and it was dark and broken.

—

A/N: Reference made to Charlotte Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'.


	33. Made-up Wings

It called to try and dream in rest, but they only came in brief dark waves. They never bled out their colors and it made me blind and deaf.

"I kind of thought it was a weird story once."

There are grey times close to morning in some cities, when heavy clouds made it dark though the lights were turned off by the clock. Vague shapes of concrete walls slowly bending and decaying, outlined in fog. And then it becomes a maze and there's no memory of which turns you've travelled or which turns to go.

I wanted to see them all burn.

Only in circles. You should know what's been done already but if you keep losing that half-trapped awake there's nothing for it.

"God. You actually think you're serious. The crazy one, the crazy one."

I saw someone dead. I watched someone die. She was nothing but a monster. Nobody expects pity. I ran my hands over the woman's cold chalky face and closed her eyelids for her, like smoothing across a fold of cloth. I should have done that for her before, because she had lost everything. Adelaide burned screaming.

"Ellie's book. I own it."

I saw trees growing in a colonnade in the woods, but in my mind they grew out of the body of a woman. Everyone dies sometime. I can't see myself beyond a year, beyond ten months, beyond a day or two trapped in here. I never thought of growing old.

"I don't want you to be cold."

Frost crept on grass that was steel instead of grass. The harsh surface left bruises and flattened out skin. It crept up and made things glacially paralyzed and stiffened out a body lying across it.

People can be made not to wake up from sleep. People can be made very docile. It's better to sleep when something hurts if you can. I couldn't tell what was natural or unnatural and waited in the dark, which bred half-dreams on a cold floor.

Once I ran through the sights and colors of a travelling carnival to make sure I found my mother, but this time there was only dead grey bark masks shaped like faces in a long night.

A door opened sent me awake because there was blinding light.

"Humans need fresh air. We all do. Come with me."

Because it seemed better I left with Helen. Outside the windows it was dark, and because not all places in the house were lit I stumbled up behind her. She opened the front door to a risen full moon, changing from painful burning light into softer night. A gust of wind blew fresh frostlike air across us. Tall trees framed her garden and then grew very close together, and the road spooled away into the darkness like a wide grey string.

She stopped me from falling down the outside stairs, but leaning on her was nothing like a human. I regained footing easily enough.

"You don't sleep."

"We cannot," Helen replied. "...It does grant us more time to work. I have composting to do here." She led a way past the chickenwire hutch, and drowsy rabbits woke and squeaked—possibly with terror—at us. There were a lot of them, light long-eared fast-moving furred shapes in the night. She'd fed me some mystery meat, from time to time, cubed and fried and slightly sour...

She didn't fence her garden and she turned to a black heap, carrying a spade.

Take a chance. Of course you should take a chance.

Run and don't look back because that only costs time. Run where there's cover and nobody will see. Run far and fast because there is a chance—

I didn't hear her spring back and only felt the hand on my upper arm. Not painful, considering. Not nearly as painful as she could have made it. She didn't drive in the open skin below the bandages. Helen's face and hair were shadowed under a low-branched tree. I screamed into the night in case any human was there to hear. She waited.

"It's not that nobody would help you if they could hear," she said in a break. A raw throat sounded like a whimper. "But there is nobody. Our senses are sharper than yours."

_...Whatever you're going to do, do it and stop this waiting..._

"Let me go."

"The duty of a prisoner is to escape," Helen said—steady as if she quoted it like a rule. "I am not going to hurt you. Be calm." Her grip was unbreakable. She didn't fight back—but she was a cold sheet that couldn't be untangled away, or vines that held like steel chains.

_...And you know what will happen if you give in and what it means to give in, and when running away is no longer possible—_ She waited still as stone and she outlasted anything I could do. I fell down in the tree's shadow.

"Running away is sane," she told me. Another effort to make me think she was kind. "Fear not for your mind. You are not prey."

"You probably told Carl and Adelaide so." Her arm around my shoulders was no comfort, and I buried my head between my knees. Helen made no reply. I wanted control enough for her to stop it; I wanted to run and run and never have to look back; I wanted to be far from here.

She tried to help me stand again, though it wasn't needed. She went back to her heap as a cloud overhead blackened the moon. Lights shone from inside as if nobody there slept. I watched her from a distance, thinking about darting back again and waiting for the vampire to give chase. I shivered in the cold, though the fresh air was better than inside. Easily past midnight; one or two in the morning and something to tell myself what time had passed. Helen never looked back, kneeling over her work in the south border, though I was sure she observed.

I picked a leaf tinted shiny black in the dark and stripped a thin branch half off a bush, separating the thin parts that stuck it together. Clenched a handful of thin needles torn off a fir. Stuck a hand in a thornbush and gained a scraped forefinger. Walked over where they had made the fire for Adelaide—the ashes were long raked over and the ground looked like any other. Ashes white and feathery as dust after the purple flame. Peeled thick scraps of falling bark to fling on the ground. Helen's wheelbarrow squeaked. The faint light from the house lightened her hair and face like a ghost.

"Do you want help?" I said.

She gave me a trowel—turned on a porch light—and set me to fill holes with compost. Old rotted leaves, muddy pellets, dirt, manure, and things that felt and looked like tiny fragments of bone. Possibly not human. I could make a mark on this place. Draw on a tree with the metal tip—scrape along part of the house—rip down more branches—hide something else in the hole. Let other people know I was here. Odd that mostly I'd hate attracting attention at all. I was here on this night running rabbit bones through my fingers and on some level it mattered—

"Jon Icarus," I said, starting simply. "Why was he called that?"

Helen turned and answered a simple question with a simple answer, her hands moving all the while to gently settle a hole she'd filled in. "We change our names from place to place. I doubt Jon had a true surname."

"Jon, short for anything? Jonathan? Jonas? Johannes? Jonah?" A stupid question.

"No."

"You people say the Moirai are powerful vampires. You think they'd kill me. If people investigated what happened," I asked. "Are they really worse than your husband?" The insult to him might have altered her, because she watched me and did not look away, though her answer was still calm.

"You should beware the Moirai. They live across the ocean, but they observe all of our kind. They would kill you—or try to turn you." Helen might have slightly shaken her head. "They feed on humans but they keep our kind secret rather than make the world a slave to bloodlust."

_They talk about these Moirai. That's all. I believe in vampires with red eyes—Adelaide in the van._

"I don't want that either. You should believe that. Leave me somewhere on the east coast and I'll stay out of sight of anyone from here." It was part a lie—I'd return to the ward in Seattle no matter how long it took. _You're lucky that we were the first to taste your scent_, she said._ Those who drink blood aren't known for their restraint_— "Don't—" The ground was rough and cold. "Don't keep me here."

It was too far and too cold and giving too much away.

"If you think your sins can't be forgiven, why don't you kill yourself in a fire?"

She nudged her compost in place, silent again. She did this work slowly and delicately for what she was, keeping herself to human's speed as if she hesitated over something very precious. She wouldn't ask the same question back.

"Winter comes," she said, brown muck spread over her gloves, "we prepare the ground for new plantings."

White mist spiraled from my mouth when I breathed. "Because you're not sure that the ghost is dead. The white dust in the air. Bodhi tried to set her on fire. She was ground to dust and still conscious. You think perhaps Adelaide's ashes are still..."

"Fire ensures we do not rise up." Helen straightened in the night, outlined in moonlight. Branches bent toward her with a whispering that went against the wind. Sheafs of black pine needles flew across lonely beams of light by her. "But only those with souls can sleep. That is why."

—

Bodhi set the ash ghost free.

Which wasn't true: Helen hoped that set them free. She did not and could not know. Whether ashes lingered covered by grass, sleeping or waiting—but never dying.

Humans don't do that; humans die and are buried and atoms change into other shapes. Lose a human mind and you have lost everything... The times come when no matter what you want you slip away into a dream, work weighting arms and legs with heated fatigue. Probably death is like that, peace if nothing else guaranteed after all the pain of being ripped apart and burned.

Eyes, hands, ears, mouth, legs, ears, warmth, a human arm around your shoulders, sleep. A cloud of white dust in the air—fine enough to shred anything. Alone. You'd go mad if you weren't already.

I want to live, the estrie said in the night. So I will drink the life of my friend from her.

Vampires are a metaphor for aristocrats who feed on the poor. Those who might as well be dead already.

A human soul is supposed to exist following the death of the body: a spirit that is formed of insubstantial substance and waits for a day of judgment. There is no proof of any of this.

Prayer, gods or death cannot cure.

"Perdita," I found myself saying aloud to the four close walls, not knowing from where it came. "Her name is Perdita."

—

Alora pushed herself in the room while I was awake. High and cheerful as if she was putting it on. Her pink pigtails stiff with dye jutted out from her head as usual and she wore a light purple patchwork shirt over rolled-up short jeans. "You look very well today. I can't smell you bleeding any more. Actually, apart from that—" She looked down, because I was sitting against the wall. "You look awful. Like a sad clown. But it's mean to say so. Would you like to come with me?"

She left the door open. Jon's house was wide and bare and white for the most part in the hallways, sterile as a hospital. No trace of leaf or dirt from the trailing ivy was allowed beyond its boundaries; none of the windows seemed to open to the outside at all. Outside the light was a blue morning, the sun rising up.

"Would you let me go somewhere else?"

"Oh. That's funny." The girl turned back, tilting her head up to speak to me, yellow eyes wide in her face. She walked quickly. "No, Jon wouldn't like that one bit. He does a lot of work at the hospital. And if people knew about us then all his experiments would be ruined...and he wouldn't like that one bit," the girl repeated, shaking her head. "Big brother Jon always knows what he wants."

"He's not really your brother. Your...sire? Guardian?" A touch of a shoe left a scuffmark on the pristine walls. Perhaps they made Antony or Helen clean.

"Big brother," Alora repeated—surprisingly firmly, a few strong lines joining in her face like folds in clean paper. "We tell humans that Bodhi's my sort-of auntie Bodhi, but really we ought to be sisters. That's much nicer. Come in so I can keep my promise from before. Rainbows are pretty." She opened a door—hung by a pink nameplate with a straw doll smiling mindlessly above it.

Entire families could live in a space as large as Alora's. She'd filled it easily: two large closets that seemed filled to overflowing, a sewing machine set up on a small table with pieces of ribbons and offcuts and paper patterns by it, three white dummies draped in clothing by a stepladder, soft-looking thick plush chairs in fringed red, colorful stuffed toys covering a shelf, a frilled bed that didn't look slept in at all, and hanging from the ceiling a lot of crystal ornaments that shed lights on her walls. She had a large east-facing glass window and made herself a room full of rainbows. One of her walls was painted with a giant cartoon drawing of a grinning, waving sun in bright yellow.

She'd hung back, making me go in first as if it was some way to pretend to be polite; I saw her smile where she stood by the door and reach out to the reflection of a prism by her, a brilliant blue-green. Red danced across my hand then yellow, and as I walked the colors in all the crystals bled into other parts of the spectrum. I brushed a low-hanging faceted crystal ball out of the way, and stepped over to stare out the window. Between the trees the sun shed light on the glass ornaments Alora fastened to her window—some of them gold-surrounded to make animal shapes, two crystal swans and a bear cub and a smiling lion—and beyond there was nothing to see but the forest. Eastwards was the sea and Monty's reservation. And if anyone could see, anyone at all—someone with more-than-human eyesight who could turn into a giant wolf, a birdwatcher in the woods turning the binoculars somewhere they thought was human—I waited in the window and tried to hope to draw attention. _Smash it open with a hand—and bleed. And then—_

The pink curtains closed. Alora pulled back on a string. "Come on, Xavier. That's enough rainbow-gazing, then. I'll let someone else show you the other nice thing that happens to us with sunlight—it makes Jon look like an angel. Ellie's nice too, and she let me find clothes for you because I like making people look pretty. Antony's hand-me-downs wouldn't suit you even if you were shorter and as big as him. You're a Spring."

It was ridiculous. She kept talking about her class with Mrs Fox at the school; that once she went to Paris and studied clothes there and loved touring the museum at Versailles...

"—They had a Hall of Mirrors and that was very pretty, a lot prettier than it looks in pictures, but in the end I can make many more rainbows myself. I hope you're nearly finished..."

At least she had a screen to change behind. What would be the point of thanking her for it?

"I'm happy." Alora looked up and down and smiled widely, her mouth light pink and no blood in her cheeks. She always looked as if she ought to flush a healthy bright apple-red; she did not and that was inhuman, blue-tinted death in her face clear at certain angles. "Very happy. You look better. Nice and comfy? Good. —You wouldn't like to dye your hair some nice color to go with it, would you? Oh, all right, then. Sit in one of the comfy chairs if you like. I do want to show you something."

Red, thick plush and new stuffing, facing away from the door. I sank in while she searched through her shoulder bag, trying not to feel as if it was eating me. The new shirt had stiff, slightly itchy cuffs. Glancing up I saw her ceiling: festooned with dangling crystals, but above that it had been painted to look like a close photograph of loose-woven cloth—_she_ likely painted it. The threads of it were a pale yellow, and above it dead-black spots were drawn over the pattern as if something consumed holes in it. It felt oddly unsettling to watch for any length of time, and I looked away.

"I see the future," Alora said carefully, blinking her eyes as if she did so with as much purpose as a reptile slipping underwater. "In parts. Sometimes my visions don't come true and sometimes I don't get them in time. And these are only my cards made by a human."

She showed off the pack—the dancers in bright ruffles and dresses she'd used for solitaire. "Wands, Coins, Cups, and Candy Canes. See?" She held out a picture of a black-haired woman in pink, dancing around a red-and-white striped cane. "Some versions use sharp things, but candy canes are nicer. Don't worry! I didn't eat the artist." She shuffled them quickly, like a card trick, too fast to follow— "Here."

I drew a card.

It was a cloaked figure who carried a golden sack filled with sand, and in the depths of the dark purple cloak he had red, complacent cheeks. He rode a white horse with a braided mane.

"It's the Sandman in my deck," Alora said, before she'd looked at anything more than the back of it. "In other decks it's not so nice a card but in mine he only makes humans go to sleep. With a magic sack."

_By hitting them on the heads with it, probably._

_And you miss that yourself?_ I nearly asked her—the girl older than she looked. "Good. I like sleep," I said, shallowly as she was trying to make it.

"My visions are almost dreams," Alora said. "Sometimes I think I see other people's dreams. That's why it's good to be around humans sometimes—there's a girl at the school, I'm not sure which one she is, who always dreams of flying. She gives herself wings, long feathery white wings arcing out of her hollow-boned back and taking her up high in the sky, rising through the sunrise and looking over the beach and the woods." Alora's voice softened at the image, gently up-and-down in sing-song tones. "She gives her friends wings too, and the people she thinks she loves. Who aren't you.

"And I think once she did dream about you. In the bottom of an old brick swimming pool with moss rotting out of the walls and thin bad water below. You didn't have wings. Just a network of old moulding heavy purple bones growing out of our back, breaking your skin and weighting you down too much for you to stand.

"And there's a boy who dreams in music instead of pictures, the sound of guitar strings playing songs that sound like the sea or like the mermaid songs in stories, and one of Bodhi's girlfriends, the mean one, doesn't want to tell anyone that she dreams in mathematics..." Alora said. "Draw another card."

"There's a human trick for knowing what's about to be drawn," I said, and kept my hand covering its back.

"When it's close it's easy. Ten of Wands. Three of Cups," Alora said.

"Queen of Swords," Bodhi added, before I'd even uncovered the last one for myself, and forced her way inside.

Alora smiled as if she'd expected that.

There was a black-haired woman in delicate-drawn silver armor like Joan of Arc on the next card, wielding a red-and-white striped pole like a barber's sign, where the red might have passed for blood. Bodhi strode across without the sword.

"—This is how futuretelling and reading minds work together," Alora said, "I _told_ you that my sister and me can do fun tricks with each other..."

"Thought you were going to stay away longer," I forced out. Bodhi crossed the room like an icy winter wind, cold and swift and always restless.

"Carl helped them rob me of my strength for a short while. I had to avenge that. Here."

She flung something at me. I screamed—she'd think that weakness and of course it was. A long curling thing coming out of a lump of something—things that shouldn't exist. A vine from some kind of plant but impossibly hard and almost metallic, curling like a moist living thing—and what it was rooted in was a lump of light-colored flesh that was also hard and cold, a frozen piece of something that looked far too close to human.

The next reaction was _a piece of curiosity_, something that no human had dissected before, not so different from a piece of kidney or a frog's dead leg twitching or a deer...

"Take it back. Burn it. He—" Bodhi scooped the thing up again. I had not faced him but the vines growing out of the dead body were enough. And the knowledge that being broken did not kill them.

"Oh, I will. After I guilt the cow some more about it." She twined it between her fingers. "She should have finished him herself in the beginning. After she and Jon were done planting trees inside the nearest vampire they could find, back then in the good old days..."

"Before me," Alora piped up. "Ellie is _nice_."

"Fucking cow," Bodhi summed up again, and I thought she looked at me. She wore nothing on her face and her eyes were the color of old blood.

I could imagine it, whether falsely or not: Jon's cold hands holding the man down on a table and Helen reaching into his open stomach with her seeds, changing them into cold harsh impossible plants rooted deep inside. And because they healed quickly—as Antony, as Bodhi's seeing eyes—they would have to slice open again and again to complete the experiment. Helen spoke of it as sin and torment.

"Your brother likes to experiment, doesn't he?" I tried to speak lightly around it. _Kill me rather than end up with another Adelaide, Bodhi, because her mind was gone_— "Tell me all about how _you_ know him—Alora, when were you found?" I asked her instead of her sister.

She stepped forward and back, like a small bird. "Oh, that's another silly question to ask—just another way of asking a lady her age. I was in a bad place and Jon came and rescued me," Alora said.

"—Your accent's southern, a touch old-fashioned, Tennesee or Mississippi or Louisiana or that region..." It annoyed me that Jon and Bodhi spoke in such a patternless way; I knew what plenty of accents should sound like across the states.

"Yes. It was one of those places. We forget lots of what we used to be when we change, you know," Alora said. "I remember people are mean to mad people or people they think are mad and back then they were very mean—back in older times they were meaner. At least they didn't drown me in a ducking pond or invite tourists to poke us with sticks like in Old Bedlam—" She gave a quick glance to Bodhi. "Jon took it over, because he's _always_ been a doctor. Then everything was okay. I wish I remembered being nice to all the friends I must have had in the old days..."

"Oh, you were _very_ nice to them, after—" Bodhi interjected.

"Bodhi, stop it, that's being mean." She turned back. "You and me both have school to get to, anyway, so come back with me, Xavier..." Too fast to follow, she'd taken my hand and pulled me up, but so fast that I fell on her floor. She was as strong as the rest of them. I picked myself up. "Sorry! I didn't mean to do that. Let's go back. You shouldn't be going to school anway, not after you've been hurt. And you never liked it much, did you?"

"But you like it better than being here," Bodhi said, coming too close—although she didn't taunt that I should not have ignored her to begin with. Her breath still carried a strange sweet decay, and it was tinged with something like the copper of old spilled blood. "Don't pretend you're not thinking of escaping. Or of what you'd like to do to us if you had the power—"

Better her sharpness than lying. "I distracted the ash vampire from you because I thought I'd be next. Or Monty," I said. "In case you wanted to know."

—


	34. Ave Regina Caelorum

Helen talked. The others had their moments of staring at me like food. You shouldn't keep prisoners dangerously close to running out of that house—wandering around it like a strange cold asylum. I had seen little of Jon Icarus. Better to be out than locked up—listening, and trying to avoid attention.

Someone played piano music. Something that sounded like it ought to have had trumpets, precise and old-fashioned and militaristic. Then a change: something that soared, a familiar pattern—churches. _Allow me to praise thee; against thy enemies give strength_, that part just there was how the words went; it was a long time since_..._

_Antony_. He was the one who played.

Every so often the concrete floor shook itself like an earthquake. The one with the beard—Killigan—and Bodhi armwrestled, bracing themselves against each other in the middle of the wide room beyond the pitted, scratched ping-pong table. They had done so for what felt like hours. Killigan wasn't too much taller than her, though heavily built; but she easily kept him back.

This door was unlocked, blocked by a large smooth sofa; and they were not paying attention to anything else. The music broke off suddenly and I glanced back, but neither of them moved. I turned the doorknob open—yet Veronica and Antony saw, descending stairs together.

She looked as if she'd smelt something unpleasant—or had, or the reverse. Antony walked with a lot of dignity for one who'd been dismembered days—I hoped it was _days_ and not _weeks_—ago, a stiff-collared white shirt tucked above his thick sweater.

"Don't make a nuisance of yourself. Go back in there. The most inept attempt at escaping one of our kind I have seen, if that was meant—" he directed to Veronica.

"Your latest toy, Bodhi, is a scarecrow even for you," Veronica aimed at her sister—something like that.

Bodhi leaned back as if Killigan was winning. Then suddenly and fluidly her arms curved around, close to her body, and she'd flung the other vampire over her head crashing to the floor. I felt it move. Killigan took the fall in a roll and glared at her.

"Fancy bag-of-tricks for you to pull for a catfight." He watched the two of them, an odd grin spreading across his face.

Bodhi took up a karate-like stance and beckoned to Antony. She looked as fresh as if she'd never fought at all. "Still want to get a rematch on? I beat you running around the woods crazy, and taking the head of the one behind it wasn't nearly enough exercise."

"I look forward to defeating you in fair combat at any time outside, Bodhi." Antony folded his arms. "If you must know, Veronica wished to tell you to stop shaking the house with your childish games." His girlfriend waited beside him, letting him give out her instructions. "Or are you showing the human the meaning of our strength?" Antony asked. There was anger as he watched me. Perhaps he resented that sight of his head in the porcelain bowl like an olive stuck in vinegar, eyes rolling and that pale liquid running away from his neck. If I'd a cigarette lighter to throw back then—

"A waste of time," Veronica said, "the feeble-minded are worthless to us." She looked at me, and I could ignore her beauty by cataloguing the inhuman notes in it: the lack of blood underlying her polished dark brown features, the wine-red skirt that clung too cleanly pressed to her long legs, the braids in her hair smooth as if carved out of stone.

"Bodhi says that neither of you have a power," I said. More Alora who told of it—but Bodhi herself liked her skills, and she warred with Veronica. Antony's back was set against the door, and the way he blocked it did not change as he knotted his forehead together.

"Learn your place. Insolence in a human is unwise," he barked. Bodhi raised her dark eyebrows.

"Oh, Ronnie, aren't you worried about competition?"

"No. His only value lies until Jon discovers his secret, and that is nothing." Veronica lowered her black eyelashes over her topaz eyes, dramatic in her flawless face. Her teeth were perfectly white and aligned. She did not tilt up her head when she spoke directly to me.

"My sister ought to ask you," she said, softly and deliberately, "how it feels to lose half your mind over missing someone, and yet know it was they who fucked you up so badly that you can't live without them." The profanity was unusual coming from her—the words echoed against the walls.

I didn't answer.

Ms Enn probably wished she could do as much with one single sentence— I tried to gather back thoughts and know that they couldn't read me. Not really—

Veronica slowly smiled, as if she took illumination from the room rather than gave it.

I'd never seen Veronica fight—didn't particularly want to—but she could use words alone like a knife. The four figures stood heavy as stone statues, cut out of the air.

"Ronnie _thinks_ she's a shrink," Bodhi said.

Veronica examined her clear clean nails. "A more intriguing hobby than greasemonkey, dear. We can be creatures of civilisation if we choose."

Bodhi challenged, and perhaps you could have mapped it onto wild animals wrestling for position. "Anything you do, I do it better."

"Dear, if you studied anything more sophisticated than your crude reading you would soon understand," Veronica said, with an infinitesmal shrug of her right shoulder. "If only you had more than the attention span and intellectual capacity of a narcoleptic goldfish..."

"You come closer, _dear_, and I'll cram that stick so far up your aristocratic ass that it'll fuck up your—"

Then Antony stepped forward—probably the heaviest out of all of them, unpredictable anger in him. I'd stepped back away from him to the opposite wall. His glare was at her this time. "Bodhi, you will either apologise or recuse yourself from the conversation."

"_Make me_," she hissed.

"Now, children." Veronica staying above the fray—flattered by it, perhaps—

Bodhi snatched up one of the bats on the table, spinning it quickly in her hands, a small piece of plywood you'd think could do nothing to them. Antony picked up the same. And, brother and sister, playing a game with a small piece of plastic flying at ridiculous blurring speeds possibly impossible for a car—

Not a safe place to wait in as a human. I ducked the games they played.

Killigan kept quiet; he had done most times I'd seen him. "...and you can manipulate people's emotions. Happiness. Anger. Melancholy," I said. Alora spoke of it; people should feel what he wanted them to feel, if they were normal humans or vampires or wolves. I felt nothing. Killigan Frazer looked at me.

"A girly gift. I like not to use it when I can hunt between my own hands and snap the neckbones in two." The expression in his dark yellow eyes was oddly flat, and I did not move at all to show fear or flight. Humans who speak like that are a sign of danger. Antony and Bodhi seemed to hit something invisible that lay between them, now, taking odd care with scraps of plywood and plastic to keep their game.

"Yet brought Bodhi to bay with it, I did," he boasted. "And the little lass prefers I keep her happy. You'd best not show her disrespect." Granite-like knuckles cracked in his hands and it was plain he had no interest in talking.

The game ended and I heard Antony leave. I waited, listening. Then Bodhi dropped down behind the sofa, not seeming tired at all.

"Antony's got muscle—I've got skill." She smiled; a human would have been flushed and pink-cheeked. Time had passed; surely at least an hour at their match. It wouldn't matter to the unalive.

"He's not stronger than you?" Bodhi hovered like a guard.

"He's the only one of us who lifts more than me, if it's a good day for him. But I'm _much_ faster. Fetching Ronnie's bags and polishing the degrees on her wall doesn't give you training. Why do you want to know?" Her mouth turned down in a curious pout.

"Allowed to be curious. Your sister was wrong, too," I said, which made her look. "Goldfish have memory for months, and pretty good sight. So said one of the textbooks..."

"Fuck those, I read Craterface's mind to pass exams." Bodhi half-smiled. "And it's always the same, over and over again—fake being a kid to blend in longer—"

She did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Yet there was her cold brother behind her.

She must have caught me watching the color of her eyes. "You'd be surprised how long human blood stays in us, if we're not cut apart. Strengthens us. Takes longer to get rid of than cougar or bear or anything else. The red wins out."

"I don't want to challenge your self-control. I should go."

That was stupid to say. She came to almost touch, leaning close, her lips parting over her teeth.

"What's the point of _not_ challenging it?" Of course that was her. Growing bored.

"Maybe you could challenge it from about five feet away?"

It surprised me that she backed off, still watching.

"Are there going to be more vampires coming for what Jon and Helen did to them once? Or something you did? Or was it just an unusually busy weekend?" Helen had said something she probably thought was reassuring when she was willing to answer that; Bodhi would be different.

"Don't worry about me," she said. "I finish all I hunt. But my brother likes to see his results—"

Something not to look forward to.

"It's unlikely," Bodhi said. "Too bad." It was almost a civil conversation. And she continued it with a change of subject. "Ronnie thinks she understands you. Not that she thinks there's much to understand."

Bodhi would notice even small winces from that. I would not give Veronica Stuart more to learn from; like Imogen Winthrop she could do a lot with what she saw. And if Imogen were here, she'd be shocked—she'd want more—she'd see the things she could do, even here.

"You don't know me. None of you know anything about me, not really. If Per—the ghost—hadn't interfered—" There was an outside world still turning, but thinking of it would be useless as envy. "It's only blood. Or smelling funny."

"Shower more," she said flippantly. "I didn't kill you when I could have—I hate having to do things.

"But isn't blood _not_ an only, even for humans?" Bodhi asked. The way she was poised—a gymnast's untiring squat, her thighs open, about to spring on something—filled the space she took completely. For a vampire she was vivid and demanding. And, no doubt, hungry.

"We moved past blood being life. Neurons are life," I told her. There was a line about the estrie and animal-eating—_For the life of the animal is in the blood._ A decapitated head being waved with gory locks—a pool of blood on the road coagulating into crystals in sunlight—words and pictures too easily came in a torrent. "People give blood all the time and it doesn't damage them. People who get blood don't—feel anything about what the other person was like. You do...if you read what's in their heads." And be made to go mad.

Adelaide had been wrong: she drugged the woman's blood to set Bodhi's trap, but what was wrong in me lay in my brain. I would not call that luck.

"Blood tells. The—" Bodhi frowned, leaning her head toward me, listing things—stealing from her sister. "Blood will have blood. Blood calls. It's a fire in the back of your throat that never goes away. Don't you have the same blood as your parents? Isn't that why your mom likes you—if she does like you."

"She raised me." It was clear from a glance. Most people who saw us thought we were mother and son, or occasionally sister and brother. The way my mind spiraled to follow her ill was also the same. Alike.

Bodhi shrugged her shoulders, almost lecturing now. "You probably get it from your dad. His head's kinda opaque to me. I thought he was just slow-witted at first, you know, typical small-town police chief with no brain. But maybe it's the same kind of thing going on with you. He still thinks of me as just a kid." She scowled. "And don't you think it's fucked up that he really hasn't gotten over your mom? He looks at you and thinks about her—

"I wonder what your mom would be like?"

I could feel the anger easily come, squeezing into closed red hands. "You stay away from her. She's in a place you can't get to."

"You miss her that much? Ronnie was right? That's—um—sad—in the pathetic sense—"

"You even remember yours?" She didn't care about anything, couldn't—

It made her stop taunting for a second. "Of course not. We forget what we were and move on to this—for all I know they were dead before we changed. Jon doesn't care either. The names of our families and the squat dead place in nowhere the time we were human. It's nothing. You'd not want to remember either."

"You don't think it matters."

"Nope," Bodhi said, and she launched herself at my left wrist—pulling, but not biting. She let me go to walk with her back to the sealed room.

She had talked a bit like this on the rooftop with wind in her hair. Talked like people—and they were not. She could unlock the door when she chose. They hadn't forgotten that yet. Something red danced behind my eyes and in the darkness I saw only the inhuman faces watching and waiting. Alora smiled, asking to be made happy like a human grasping at valium.

And then Helen came and sat beside me, listening and pretending consolation, quiet and restrained and telling her lies to herself. She brought light with her.

It meant nothing. Long smooth light-colored hair and a gentle voice and a slim tall shape and the odd glamor—it had no meaning. It might have been easier to sit with her than be alone locked in the dark. She was calm, and I did not know if the unnatural level softness in her came from the same source as Alora's happiness.

She talked of her garden outside. Her evergreen grapetail, her orange honeysuckle grown for the hummingbirds, her cold-blown ferns and their strong scent. Listening to the tone and not the words was almost pleasant; listening and trying not to think of where and what she was could be lived with. Sometimes she would put a cold arm around my shoulders as if to be a comfort. She stopped when I leaned away.

"The last time I saw my mother..." I began, and Helen listened. "She was sad and I didn't know why. There's been nothing I can do for her—or that I know how to do. I don't know how they're treating her far away there. All I could do was sit with her. And she still needs me."

She'd probably not know about this. I did not think Gordon would tell her. Everything I said was true, and perhaps Helen heard that in my voice.

"She was worried and I left her," I said.

"Were you worried for other reasons? About events at school?" Helen interrogated, following the thread on.

Worried about them, she meant. "No. Yes. Somewhat."

"Then perhaps her concern was only for you," Helen said.

That one—Helen lacked Veronica's ability to get under your skin. Mom would have minded if I'd let her know, but I didn't do that to her.

"Do you think that your father is not caring for her?" she said. The beige voice was like a stream with no life in it, and because it was easy and soft it slipped onward. "I know that your relations with him must have seemed...strained."

It was a stupid question and what I said told her as much.

"I do not know the circumstances. I apologise. But I will tell you that I have noticed you have not asked about your father in recent days. He is worried..."

What happened outside did not matter—except if they needed to hide all the evidence of their nature.

"I happen to know I'm still alive."

"I have also heard him defending you," Helen said. "You have a human life to live."

_That you are stopping short_, I thought, and tried not to notice the coldness of her hands.

"I miss my mother." She listened. Helen's right arm stayed resting across my back, almost as gentle as her voice.

And so I asked of her human life.

—

A/N: Reference is made to a prayer I didn't write. There's a YouTube version that's very good ('Palestrina Ave Regina Caelorum').


	35. The Convert

She was born in the time of one of the Georges in the north-east of England, not long before the thirteen colonies broke away from the Crown on the other side of the world. That mattered nothing to Helen Fletcher and her sister. There was a manor-house; a small village where they raised cows and red clover and wheat; woods that surrounded the path from manor to village and that flowered in beds of blossoms in spring: meadowsweet, golden creeping-jenny, pimpernel and tansy, small scented wood anemone, tufted buttercup, soft violets by pathways, birds'-eye speedwell, white campion, columbine and pink meadow-rue and ox-eye daisy. The squire's under-gardener had two daughters; the daughters grew to be maids in the house; and to matins or to spend a half-day in the village they'd pass through the trees, knowing each branch and each footfall-made path. She gathered flowers.

And the fair man came striding through the woods.

In Helen's story the gentleman came upon her quietly and surprised her to turn around and see him standing in the dappled shade of an aged oak tree: a pale man of middle height, his dress too costly for walking but untarnished by it, speaking to a maiden with her hands full of flowers and her loose hair tumbling down. For she was not so far grown as a woman that she could not seem like a girl.

Yet his intentions were honorable. She fled like a deer at the moment she could, but he was not a gentleman who ruined women like a wolf. A welcome guest of the squire who talked of philosophy and microscopic experiments with him; a man of independent fortune but scarce antecedents; a man with odd, black eyes, seeing everything before him. Even then, Helen said, he scarcely fed. He was a man of control.

And in the woods—deliberately, most like—his steps would overlap with the under-gardener's daughter, and he would speak of plants and tell her of the Linnaean names, learning from her the country knowledge and lore and where herbs of rare kind could be found. It was wrong for a maid to be seen in that manner. But the gentleman treated her with distant virtue as if she were of his class.

After the visit of the gentleman the life of the squire altered far for the worse, though the visitor had seemed all that was charming to most. His investments were overturned; a lawsuit was brought against him for an overrunning byway that had seemed settled for the past seventy-five years; and a fire broke out in his wing where he sought to replicate an experiment, depriving him of sight and right hand.

In these reversals of fortune the squire retired to a small villa with only a few servants to attend his illness and the other servants were turned to make their own way in the world. The fair gentleman offered several of the womenservants a place in London: to expand his household for his young sister and his foreign ward.

Helen named her sister as Esther, a twin, and described her as the more well-favored: more lively and outgoing, a delight to all, and the cynosure of all eyes. Ellie and Ettie, I could almost hear inside my head. Esther willingly chose to travel to the metropolis and seek a chance, the more so as the salary was fair and part given in advance; and they were alone in the world, father and mother having quietly departed several years before.

And in the city the fair gentleman with dark eyes made certain offers that did not step against the bounds of the church in essence, though so in propriety. He educated them, Helen said: offered a governess in a small private house to remedy reading and writing above the small amount learned from their first home, a music instructor, drawing-master, even a lecturer in botany. He spoke of an experiment that even girls such as they could be taught to be ladies and fit companions for gentlewomen, swearing to respect their characters.

Helen learned enough for a lady; her sister learned this and more, to play the pianoforte and sing like a lark. The facts of her life as a human were spoken as dispassionately as if read from a book about another, except when Helen mentioned this—or spoke of plants. It seemed she had kept diaries of the last part of her life.

The fair gentleman wished her to sketch the leaves of a flower with taxonomic accuracy; pronounce the Latin names; press flowers and grow different strands in windowboxes as experiments. She wished to learn of the flowers she had loved in the home woods in the village, and he arranged for her education. Often there were rides into the countryside, travelling with a hired chaperone, and these were joys to the country maid.

_For what purpose?_ Ettie would ask, fingers dancing across a tune, Ellie placing a cut flower in a delicate china vase. _Why should he continue this? Why should we not leave—I as music-teacher or singer and you as lady's maid? It starts to seem unending..._

_I could never feel that time ran slowly with him. For he speaks of so many things. And he is always gentle with us._

_With you, and I would not begrudge it, sister. But we do not know what he wants._

One was tranquil; one curious; Jon Icarus—for that was still a name he went by then—piece by piece showed them the other world. And his dark sister, vicious and playful, though Helen used softer words for it, and the foreign princess who was his ward, began to speak with the humans.

Jon delayed a turning because vampires were frozen in their time, Helen said. He wished her to grow and learn as far as she could. But he had gathering enemies—who sometimes drank from humans. Time caught up on Helen and her sister.

_You do not have to kill humans, Helen_, he promised. _Long ago I learned we can survive on animal blood. You may feel differently once you learn our hungers, and neither for that will I blame you._

_It is sinful to live on another's death._

_Religion is childish superstition_, he chided._ People have mistaken my sister for a goddess._

_The books you have given do nothing to shake my faith, and much to teach me of it, Jon. If I am to be yours I will murder no human._

He offered her immortality, power, beauty. He made it clear that he would not abandon her to the ravages of time. Or to any of his kind. He brought her to a church and wed her in the tradition of her faith, and swore to keep every word that he avowed and more.

He tried to change the sisters both. Their blood seemed potent and identically so. He did nothing like his past experiments on Adelaide to alter either Helen or her sister; only did what he could to ensure their survival of the process.

"It is agony, an agony that few can bear, and after it passes the old life is a tangled dream through a dark mirror," Helen said. "Only then do you learn what it truly means. My twin was taken and I was left.

"I threw away my human life and gave her death. And though I rose with a gift I abused it in a test on a red-eyed one."

The one with the lump of flesh and wriggling vine: once he was a predator and before that human. Trees bent and flowers bloomed to Helen's will when she rose from death, a power far stronger than her human life. Her sister's silvered voice was silent in a true grave. She did not try to excuse herself for conducting the experiment.

"Then we travelled, Jon and I and the others," she said: in Monty's tale it was Jon Cullen and his three brides. "We crossed the ocean to the west coast of the Americas, to live isolated from humans and temptation, where the only supernatural creatures in the territory lived to protect humans. We made certain that we could live without human blood. It was peaceful here. It is better not to kill. The mind is taught to think of more than food.

"When there is no human life left to live. When we live lightly on human ground. Veronica did not throw away her human life: she was to be executed. Antony and Killigan would have died in war. Alora suffered as cruelly as humans can cause. I did wrong to accept the change."

"Jon and Bodhi."

"Their story is older and is their own." Helen's face closed across itself, smooth as marble. "Jon treats me gently. He has never fed on human blood since we wed."

She swore to obey him. People did at the time.

"You urge me not to try joining you."

Helen pressed one of my hands, lightly and gently for stone. "Yes. A human life and soul has worth. There will come a time when a way will show itself. Have faith."

Never in her. My cheek touched the coronet of hair bound closely around her head, strands of fine cold wire.

"You are kind," I lied to her.

Water streamed from above and Helen waited somewhere outside. Steam fogged the glass door on the inside, the air heavy and wet, almost thick enough that patterns of clean air could have been drawn in the fog like a finger tracing a line on frosted glass. I wasted water.

You could picture a girl with loose red-gold hair and flowers in her hands, in a meadow with close-set spring trees and soft-eyed cows like a postcard. _That cow_, Bodhi would say. It meant that she thought the same of all humans. And in slaughterhouses some were gentle to cattle before knocking them on the skull and slitting their throats, and some cruel.

I was clean—red-skinned with hot water, scrubbed with soap. It was a human who invented plumbing. The room was empty beyond the glass. Sterile as Jon seemed and sealed without windows. Bare-scrubbed white ceiling—was it Helen who cleaned?—and inset mirror and metallic fittings.

Plenty of destructive possibility but few of escape. Fog blurred my sight. Steam-fog, nothing like that dust. Most of the long dark scabs were slowly mending, soft after the water soaked them, though the mark that Adelaide left on my back twinged each time I shifted too quickly. I leaned back against the clean tiles. I knew how it ended and couldn't—

Human but not quite helpless. The main door opened.

It was oddly satisfying to think that they too could touch dirt and walk away with it on their hands. The heavy, smooth footfall was Antony's—like a locker room at school. Easy enough to tell from his shape behind grey shadows. I reached for a towel.

The fog soon cleared; he wasn't what a human would call dirty, slightly grass-stained, rain-damp, cuffs of his sweater disarranged. I looked away quickly.

Not enough.

"...and some of you refer to us as leeches."

You follow the rules of not looking, get the clothes, and dress again as quickly as you can.

He didn't let it go. "You will listen when spoken to, human." His eyes seemed dark and impatient in his face. Not such a dramatic color on him as Bodhi or Jon. He strode forward.

"Helen sent you?" _Once Veronica played scavenger hunt for your pieces and I know it._

"Hardly. Do we need an excuse to walk in our home? Your kind never knows your place."

Antony was taller than the others, but broad enough to look squat. Deepset eyes below long thick brows, a straight flat-boned nose running through his sallow face, a rounded chin poking forward. Not to be provoked any more than some school bully.

The sleeves of Alora's shirt were glossy and slightly awkward. I reached for buttons, sitting on a bench from the wall. "You dislike humans but don't eat them. Curious."

He didn't move: his face was inhumanly still and I realized he did not bother to blink. "You may have noticed that female Adelaide selected. _That_ is the sort that the nomads of our kind are driven to consume. Street harlots, drug fiends, and feeble-minded beggars. The worthless among you."

That shouldn't be enough. The water had reddened the scabs and the skin as if angry. It snapped quickly out. "So you'd rather eat the President?"

"A foolish jest." His mouth thickened over itself in anger. "Besides, I consider the alleged government of the union illegitimate. I do not eat those beneath me—I have killed brutes in human form and allowed none of their blood to touch my mouth. But my record is not so clear as Helen's. I have drunk, twice, when Veronica instructed me to know what I lay aside." He leaned over me; I tried to look away.

_You will get out of here. Get out, get out, get out._ Shirt, trousers, belt.

"Very generous of her."

"Yes," he said, and it didn't seem he'd caught a trace of sarcasm. Veronica was beautiful like a statue and had a keen quick mind like a knife, but away from her glamor for me it was akin to remembering a wooden sculptured figure in a park. Antony spoke of her the way some people speak of their gods. "It sates a hunger but makes us less than what we are. Dependence on humans is a weakness. There is nothing you have that we cannot better on a whim. Veronica took me from the fires of battle and gave me a gift.

"There is nothing," he repeated, but leaned too close. A hand struck the skin on my neck—too cold, too solid— "But that you are warm."

I jerked away. He held on; he could have held on more, fingers pressing into soft skin of neck and chest. There was a flash of white teeth in a face too close, whitened by a liquid that flowed over them, cold sickly-sweet breath blowing by my face— I fled and the hands stopped touching me.

"I expected as much," I thought I heard him say. The tiles were slippery as I ran.

"You seem startled." Helen grabbed me by the shoulder—again—and looked into my face, pale gold-eyed. Light from a window behind her gave a time as daylight. "You can tell me."

"Am I warm?" She released me when I moved. "Too warm? Too much blood? Breaking down a cow? Tracing a—tracing the wrong thing? I can't—"

Helen placed a cold hand on my forehead, ghosting across the skin. "You should not be fevered. I can't feel if so."

"No. I don't think I am. Don't touch me." She stood like a statue in the way, calm ice. She'd block me from running past her or catch up trying to run back. She kept standing around me. Water started running again from behind.

_She lies. She'll always lie._

"Then come back and rest. You're not even dry." Wet drops fell behind my neck. "I can give you something for calmness. Jon will see you soon..."

_Please don't._

"Not now. I don't feel—well enough to talk with him. I don't want to help him. Are you going to send me to him? He's—cold, you must know how cold he is—"

"Has Jon ever harmed you?" Helen said steadily. As far as it went that was true—but I didn't need to name the other ones; had she known of the others when she'd changed—? "He is a doctor. He is curious about you, but you will not be hurt."

She'd sit down with me and wipe a salve around the scabs, coolly and distantly, touching but never as a human would. There were no bruises.

"He has told the children not to distress you," Helen said. "Bodhi can be...impulsive, Antony proud; Alora as impulsive in her way. We are not human but we have some common points with you..."

If her face blurred then she seemed almost human, but look at her the right way and take note of her strange symmetry, ageless and unblemished and a grave inside. She tried fragile as colored paper to pretend to be otherwise.

"Oh, I'm starting to know them," I said.

And sounds and metallic creaks ate into the night like cockroaches feasting and clicking over their legs. I sat up and tried not to sleep. When I felt where Adelaide had kicked the skin was heavy. I'd seen it reflected in a mirror only afterwards, after Jon had touched it: loose flaps of cleaned skin running down like a flayed knot. It wasn't charity that she had not broken bones or kicked deeper, splitting stomach and liver apart like rotting tomatoes.

Jon Cullen, Jon Cold-one, Jon Icarus, Jon the wax-winged monster.

Jon ground Perdita to dust.

Nobody said that in so many words. Alora, in the car, _There are things you must tell, Jon._ The white dust here with the others.

One tested for mental limits, one for physical, and the third for Helen's gift.

Something made of crystallized white bone like a pepper grinder, for their own bodies were capable of cutting each other open.

Most people in the town seemed to like him. Helen did. He was softer to her. He restrained himself—controlled like ice so frozen that cold steamed from him. And restrained Bodhi. Brother and sister. After Adelaide came Alora.

Grind them to death and they could not die.

_Adelaide was not the reason why I was frightened of Jon Cullen._

I slammed a shoulder into where the door hinge should be, the thin line best visible to touch rather than sight. Joints were always vulnerable.

It didn't budge.

I leaned against the wall. Tired. Helen had made a milky tea.

That was bad. That could be very bad. Calm, cool, clear, collected—tired—if coldness was wanted Jon Cullen had more than enough of that—

And if brute force was the answer then Bodhi or any of the others could break out here if they wanted to—

Sitting and waiting for him was wrong. It didn't matter if Helen meant a vampire's soon. Fight it as long as you can even in the dark.

Press your fingers over your eyelids and they spark false light no matter how black it is.

"Hey, freak." Bodhi shouldered in the door and did not wake me with a kick. Keys jingled in her right hand. "Wanna blow this joint?"

—


	36. Appointment in Samarra

_At the marketplace in Baghdad a servant was jostled by a woman. When he turned, he saw it was Death. She made a threatening gesture to the servant, and he begged his master to lend him a horse that he could ride away from that city as quickly as possible. At the end of his road he came to Samarra and promptly dropped dead. When the master saw Death, he asked, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant in Baghdad? And she replied, It was only a start of surprise. For I was astonished to see him in Baghdad when I had an appointment with him that night in Samarra._ - W. Somerset Maugham (abr.).

—

The black car glided slowly and softly out of the garage. On the road it sped through some odd hour of night.

_If you screamed, I'm sure the cow would come _rescue_ you from me._ Orange lights played across Bodhi's grey pallid skin, and the car jumped forward. It was the speed of the lights that told how fast she was going. A speeding bullet—

It was stripped down on the inside, a two-seater without covers on the seats, almost everything in it part of the machines that gave her speed. The dents in the Cockroach suggested it hadn't been without calamities. I looked out the window, shocked, at a goods truck that appeared and as suddenly disappeared in the opposite direction; I fumbled to open the door. It was already gone.

"Road pizza if you fall out this fast," Bodhi said. "Unless I rescue you from cars again."

It ate the silent road like a gust of wind tearing tissue paper. Air rushed past like a typhoon. The ground grew rougher under the tires, but they spun as quickly—old trees and cut hills flashed past as shadows. She switched off her lights and where she travelled barely looked like a road at all. Bodhi blasted through a cragged whistling byway of another world.

"You like this, don't you? You really like this." She clamped down a foot on the accelerator. Her laughter was high and bell-like, rippling like pale rags tossed by a breeze.

Wind escaped through a crack in the top of the windows, free with the cold that woke you up from anything. Winds that danced through the air and ran across your face as if they could take you away reminded you that you were alive; far better than cold stillness. The world vanished and there was only a rough wild speed like flying. It was made real by the harsh rumbling below—in an airplane you could imagine yourself still sometimes but never here, so close to the earth that sped past. She drove over bare ground no man had built on. Silver ghost-light flew across her face one moment and was gone the next, quickly enough for an illusion, and the song in the air was the sound of a storming sea. There was always something wild in her—wild and cruel and unfettered.

And it was something I could understand. Older; writ large; writ long; but even without the tricks she used on prey there was something that could have drawn me.

_If I wished to find out what they were and what they could do and the limits of their abilities: then would I try and—_

There was a hairpin turn—and a jump over something. The car flew over thin air then shuddered and shook almost enough to break teeth as it hit the ground again. Strange dark shapes flashed by. I hung on.

"What are you driving to get away from?"

The car jerked leftwards more than before—as if in annoyance. She returned it to a somewhat upright position, always juddering on as fast as before. "Who says there's a _from_?"

"Nobody runs without something to run from. Otherwise you end up in—the same place you started. I know about running."

The car jolted over trying to speak. Parts of the ground sounded small and sharp, like sand or small gravel—dark shook by outside, easily dark enough to see many stars.

"Plenty to run from, if I was the type who ran—" she said, engine drowning both our voices. I thought I saw a dark hill shaped like a clenched fist for a moment, a giant's hand raised above his own grave—then it was gone into waves impossible to decipher. "You know what I've done? A lot of the humans I've told—their first thought is, _how many people have you killed._

"Like I run from ghosts." She quickly changed gears; her eyes were set on the way ahead—as she should be. She hurtled up a hill and again her wheels lurched off the ground. She flew—across a ravine, perhaps—and landed with a freewheeling bump, skidding down another hill too steep for all four wheels to be on the ground at once. And she shouted as if she couldn't restrain her joy in it, a yell I heard like a warcry.

"The ash one was different," Bodhi called. "There are no ghosts—the unquiet graves of most people I've killed are lost forever now. If they were ever unquiet, and I heard them go pretty fucking quiet..."

The car squealed; she pushed it always forward at the same ridiculous—spectacular—speed. Then I saw rounded dark shapes rushing fast around it; an obstacle course. Sharp turns—it seemed a challenge even for her. People died like this, going too fast, plummeting and turning and breaking, if they were not made of stone—but I was far less afraid of this than inside the house. She swerved around a shape like a stone globe and it seemed to become a straighter track. Bodhi laughed.

"You think you've seen speed?" she shouted over her engine. She reached for a heavy switch trailing wire. Something opened. "_This_ is speed—"

And I would have sworn that blue fire erupted from the back of her car. She sped so quickly she couldn't turn—it had to be a long trail, running so quickly that the ground looked like dark blue water around us. The wind's whistle was harsh as metal grinding over metal or a hungry crow's never-ending call, blending above the overwhelming explosion from the engines. It stirred with my insides, tossing and playing with stomach and lungs rattling against ribcage. It was what was imagined when driving was equated with freedom.

"_This_ is what it's fucking _meant_ to be!" Bodhi howled, and the river of ground ate itself below her feet in the blink of an eye.

She slowed while the engine began to spurt and complain. "Well, that's over until I can get more rocket fuel," she said. "Fuck." I had no idea if she was joking or not. The world had come to a pale blue while she'd driven so far and so fast. She cranked to a halt with a loud sigh.

"Get out if you want. I've got to look at this."

_Run._

It was an alien world: weird, constructed ramps and pits built for giants and corroded, corrupted shapes of toys for inhuman games. It was some sort of old mining site. Few stars were left in the sky, and the soft blue light edged along the shapes on the ground and blurred everything in a blanket of mist. Black tire marks edged over smooth rows of hardened dirt. The world seemed utterly deserted.

Bodhi bent over her open hood and swore at what she saw there. "Toolbox's to the right. Give me a wrench."

_Because you'll eat me if I don't?_

"Here's the box."

"It'll do." She raised a hand coated with black grease and let her head disappear amongst the tangled pipes and wires of her engine, wet oil and heat and still-pulsing parts making them seem almost like the innards of a person.

_Where is this place?_

_Who else comes here to drive?_

_What happens if you're stuck here?_

"Do you fly as well?" I said.

"Used to." Bodhi raised her head and glared, a challenge in her darkened eyes. "Still got a license in an identity that'll hold. But it was better when you people took to the skies in things made out of rubber bands and tinder. More fun."

_I bet a fall would shatter you._

"And this is made of chicken wire and gaffer tape?"

She cursed at a connection she tightened. "You use what's there."

"—Wherever this is, it's different." I stood on the hillside by her car. The distant group of hillocks fogged by the early morning like a cluster of unformed buds was her obstacle course; the dark rift in the landscape like a meteor's strike where she'd jumped; the long straight stretch far beyond where I could see where she'd abandoned all turnings for speed. It made both of us the size and scale of ants—but humans and their machines had dug this place. "You have another world. There are times when it's interesting. Galatea. A statue come to life. Has anyone ever called you that?"

It meant ivory-made, I knew. They had no identifying scars or blemishes or birthmarks to mar their skin. Although by some angles and under electric lights there were brief streaks of paler white along Bodhi's arms, and near her brother's neck. Where she bent into the car her shirt lifted across her back.

"Not that one. I know the myth, and it's boring." She flicked a piece of red wire and parts of the engine came back to life, purring like a contented tomcat. Then she unfolded herself back from the car, blackened in a zebra stripe across her face and both arms from fingertips to elbow. "Tell me more."

"Just that if you read minds you must know more about death than anyone. Do you believe in souls?"

The air was cold and still, the blue light halfway to dawn while the stars faded above. Beyond the fog was no movement, but I did not know if eyes could see figures standing on an old human-made hill. _Not necessarily so old._

"It's crap. Helen's stuff is crap." She must be able to stand for months without tiring—but without being bored would be a different question when it came to her. "I've heard multitudes of humans die and gone on to kill more anyway."

_She is trying to watch me react to it._ She didn't trouble to exaggerate the theatrical gesture by licking her lips.

"What is it like to die?"

She was a preferable fate to her brother or to Adelaide.

"Not very imaginative. _No._ _Please_. _Mommy_. Bright lights. The devil. But there's only me. Funny you should say that when you are one of few things in this world who could kill _me_."

She walked closer; she was marked with a black half-mask, mapped in the strange light and fog before morning, like a visitor from an unreal grey world.

"I'm not gonna say when I figured it out. You're a black hole that smells like a human. And you would be worse if someone turned you. I'm too used to fighting people I can read. But I wouldn't let it be easy."

I raised my hands. She looked like a seventeen-year-old girl. "I don't fight. Not so much because of some code as I can't. You have powers."

"And skill." She stopped for a moment. "You people invent new fighting styles. I memorize them." A martial arts pose—she leaped like a gymnast. Perhaps she slowed it enough to watch—it was attractive, a dancer's or a ghost's grace. "Newborns are strong while their human blood still courses through their veins. Even Alora was once stronger than me, though she never could beat me. That's what they're not telling you. Superstrength and immunity to my powers and whatever other gift after the transformation? It could be facing my own death."

She brought me here to kill me without bloodshed. No, she didn't; I couldn't nail down the reasons for that idea but it darted silver in my mind.

It was not true, I thought, that I wanted to be nobody's death.

I spoke. "In the past I've worried not so much about what I might do as being caught for it. You've been a monster for a very long time."

"And you're on the cusp of whether you want to be one. Don't wait too long, boy." The bloodstain lingered in her eyes, the color of a bruise over blood vessels, the only spot of color in her black and grey shape. The last time she fed.

"But I'm such a monster—" Bodhi began.

And she had reached me. But rather than pin me to the ground she only forced me down with a hand on my shoulder. She faced me, both sitting on the rough cool ground.

"That for the past two hundred years I kept the vampire population in the Americas to...it can't be more than thirteen _now_. What is the point of a hunt if the prey cannot fight back? I was always a hunter." She smiled, pale teeth brilliant in her mouth. "But two hundred years is so small..."

I waited for her to say more. And she spoke again in the blue half-light. Her voice was half-whispered but high and strong and piercing. It stopped my breath for a few moments.

"In my time I've been a goddess and a queen. Thrones made of skulls and armies to do my bidding and baths of blood and maidens sacrificed and conquered territories. Oh, the thrones used to break if you sat on them too hard, and the bath got all cold and sticky in a few hours, and the slaves and armies and maidens are long gone—but they worshipped me while it lasted. There are stories that nobody remembers any more. I was a queen of demons feared through the entire known world."

She is old; old as the hills and older; ancient, blood-chilling, horrifying, and the dark in her eyes is a void in time...

"And I've been through high school sixteen times."

"Then tell me what you've done that nobody else has. Tell me how it began."

She answered. "Jon. Jon began it. Jon and I are brother and sister. Perhaps half, I don't remember. He is fair and I'm dark and he was older. We're the only family that we have. Once his eyes were blue. I remember little but I remember that. It was rare for women to be warriors but I hunted with the men with spears and ropes. Jon was something like a scientist, a wise man. Perhaps I helped bring people to Jon to find out what was inside them. And then they all realized that he did things they didn't like; that his secrets were too much for them." Her language changed and lilted as if she spoke an older English, a formal storyteller's tongue. She said her brother's name as if it was Yon, or Ion; old and beyond humans of the wrong time. Sometimes I had heard Boodi in place of Bodhi in his odd accent.

"They were going to execute him. So he made his arrangements while I was imprisoned away from him, and returned and created me," Bodhi said, and paused to boast. "I am Jon's first and his best. We escaped and spent the first few hundred years under the sea. That's what I remember much more than being human. We lived in a deep rift and hunted fish that whitened our eyes. The pressure was almost enough to make us sleep. Jon carved experiments in pictograms on coral. Strange things lie there in the depths—no mermaids or sirens or the stories you ask about, but strange things. Strange even for us. Perhaps that's why we walked back to the surface. And as early as then nobody would speak our native tongue any more.

"No shard of pottery, no fragment of parchment keeps it. Our tongue was never written, only spoken and sung—or pictured in rough lines of ochre long washed away. My brother will not speak it with me, since he sees it as useless in the weight of time passing. I have only myself. No breathing human has heard what we were for millennia."

It fascinated me. Perhaps too much like a cobra was supposed to hypnotise with glistening dark scales. Large amounts of inhuman time are not easy to envision; the time long before some ancient scribe had written that the earth was without form and void in the deeps until a voice spoke in language, _Let there be light_...

"That's—I've never had the chance to learn an old language. I know that Greek and Latin and Sanskrit are the old ones. The idea of a first language—one that every other word came from—language builds on old bones, I know what words mean and I like to know where they came from—your tongue—"

"Oh, don't get too excited there, monkey-boy," Bodhi said. "It wasn't like the generation before us all swung through trees and forgot to shave. There were other tribes who spoke differently, and when Jon and I left those bastards who tried to kill us we heard a lot more tongues in the big wide world. Actually I couldn't get them out of my head. But now I barely remember them. If I remembered everything I'd go blind and deaf."

"Speak it?" I suggested, distracted, and she voiced words I had never heard before.

Old words from an old monster; human-shaped but not human; inmost thoughts clear as glass to her, and if that was not a goddess—a decadent one of the Roman sort, or a Moloch burning people in altars of red-hot iron—then it was hard to define what was; a girl more than capable of lying. But the words fit together like a language ought even if they had no meaning, and it was akin to nothing I had heard before.

The strange alien words rolled on from Bodhi's dark-edged lips. They had a rhythm like birdsong, and few sounds to them—a lot of liquid vowels, surrounded by humming nasals and fierce stops. A tongue like harsh winds through dense trees, in a time before forests were cut down and cliffs tamed by roads and paths and cities.

"That's what it was like," she said. If she'd spoken in any way like she usually did then I'd just heard a long sequence of ancient swearing...

And this was why she was bored. You see too much and it becomes pointless.

"You aren't worthy of hearing it, but you're the only human to ask. At least I don't have to hear you ruin it in your head." Her grip on my shoulder was still fierce, and she crouched facing me.

"You don't hear me—but I don't think that's because I'm dead. Do you ever hear anything from the ash you set on fire?" Bodhi could know how they died for good—should know—her sister-in-law did not.

"Bees," she said, and I didn't understand her at first. "Ants."

It wasn't hard to grasp. "The dust in the air was close to a hive mind. I thought you only heard mammals..."

Animals with brains more like people—and even her kind must still have a brain. Perhaps even a vulnerable brain behind their softer eyes. But I wouldn't say that to her.

Bodhi impatiently gestured with her left hand. "Yeah, sure. Animals are simpler. Smells and instinct and shape rather than words—the predators are best. Insects buzz. So did she, the bitch. Crawled inside me. I set _everyone_ who tries shit like that on fucking _fire_—"

"And are the ashes still conscious?" For that was the full horror of what they were; Helen's words that they were given eternal punishment.

And if she were human I would have said that Bodhi shivered.

"I don't walk easy over ash graves. Neither does Killigan. Never mind."

_It's your problem_, I thought, and tried not to imagine living pressed into dirt and alive and unmoving in a suffocating grave. "I'm impressed. You're surprisingly well-adjusted to this world. Let me tell you—" The words came faster, and she listened for the moment. "I've travelled and there's not a state I haven't been across. I've seen a lot, not the sort of things you see when you've a brother who gives millions to hospitals—I know the other kind of world on the edges. The worlds ordinary people don't think they can see. How to live off lies and favors and jobs off the grid. The black roads boarded off from people and the hidden subway tunnels and the skeletons of factories and apartments falling apart. And I saw other sights with my mother—towers and beaches and parks and strange statues and bridges that few know how to cross. I miss leaving; I've been in this town too long already, and you have too. The small town in the middle of nowhere."

I offered it to her with all the truth I could.

"You don't trust me, so why not run away? We could get by on theft and gambling with your powers. Come and see more of the world. Let's go and be nomads." I raised a hand slowly toward her skin.

_And the moment you turn your eyes away I will escape you. You can't track trains or buses and you can't read me._ I met her eyes with nothing to fear.

She broke away from me, standing, and finally lifted her hand. She laughed to the skies.

"Sure. Nice try, boy."

I scrambled to my feet the same. I was taller, and this time I laid a hand on her granite shoulder. "Then are you really so much your brother's child?"

She stared. "Hey, you're not total crap at this. I've done it before—run around without my brother—fought with him—met interesting mortals and killed them. Run away with you and the cow stops breathing down my neck and nagging me..." she taunted; teasing if her bloodlust was above her strength. "But I will take you back to Jon."

Behind me, the sun rose. I saw it on her.

—


	37. Flood of Light

Bodhi twinkled like a little star.

The hard skin captured light like a glass prism. She didn't burn, but shimmering rainbows dashed along her skin and scattered to the ground beside her. It was incandescent enough for a legend that they shone, and from there to burning. As if a civilisation could mistake them for gods before mankind invented body glitter.

"Yeah, it doesn't burn us, retard," Bodhi snapped. "Seen enough?"

The last time I saw spangles like this it was a man in a shiny dress with a lot of sequins...

"The sun. The sun is an unimaginably large world of fire. You could die at last inside it, if you wanted to—" I said, because the dawn bathed her in such bright light. "Throw yourself into the sun and become ash there, and even if there was something left at least you would be light." It was warm on my back—I had missed that in their house. Earth and sun were older than any hominid crawling the face of it, human or vampire or anything, spans of billions of years that made even Bodhi's life a second of sunlight in a long dark room. Stars and galaxies above, and she did not seem to think about the worlds beyond her globe.

But she smiled up at me, lifting her head. The light gave her dark hair reflections like feathers rather than swallow the rays into a flat void, black reflecting brilliant green and blue sheen. Her eyes were very dark and heavy-lidded.

_Why does her skin work that way? How? Why..._

"I'll take you back to my brother alive today," Bodhi said. Her right hand crept around my neck. She squeezed around the thick artery, stopping the blood. I tried to get free and raised a hand to her face, while bees buzzed and the blood left in my head throbbed. The edge of her lips, the pale curve of her cheekbones touched by the light, toward the bones arching around her eyesockets, dark eyes in translucent, glimmering skin. My fingertips paused while my head swam, and I fell forward into nothing, nothing.

—

A thorn in Helen's garden scraped across my arm as I tried to escape. A thornbush held me back. Words became tangled and rearranged themselves and start to overlap, one voice in one ear whispering and the other yelling, waiting to switch and harmonize and turn around again. One set of thorns screamed and the other was soft and cold.

A simple story about a child who goes to the castle in the thorned woods to stay with the monster to protect a parent who can't protect themselves. It does not matter if she is a beauty behind a china mask face—I was never looked at—or if he is a peasant driven to bring back the moon or if she is a gardener who wants a single rose to create a rosebush that grows without a flaw—a rosebush with lifeless flowers like aluminum sculptures...

The freckled girl with fire below her skin running up to speak with the new beast.

The story is about a journey into a black place. Through a dark garden with sharp thorns lives the monster like a labyrinth. But is the reason why the monster asked for the child that they are already the same underneath the skin?

There was once a man who was very kind to my mother, or so I thought. It doesn't matter. She always protected me.

There is another story about a father and son—no, it was an uncle and nephew and there was an inheritance—the uncle locked the nephew in an iron cage and said he was mad, and because of that he was driven mad and the ghost haunted the house forever after.

The idea is that monsters create monsters and what is done is passed to other innocents from those who never were. And so one looks sidelong in a mirror and fears to see that heavy shadow. There is no need to become that kind of monster.

Genetic inheritance is defined as heredity and in the process of heredity the gene seeks to ensure its own survival through unconscious mechanism of evolutionary selection. Another voice spoke through me.

I turned pages in my head because anything else would tell too much; anything else would hurt. Smooth neat black print on light brown decaying paper, frayed at the edges and fly-spotted. You should imagine it white paper, glossy and unstained, for a greater contrast: the black is not dirt but well-picked out words and stories, wrapping themselves around shoulders and wrists and shins.

The thornbush caught and spiked in mad green beeping, over and over again. My breathing was a pant trying to run away, breaths constrained and slow. My eyes stuck together. Blood pulsed in my head, and a fiery ache spread through it. Something mechanical. The sounds beat loudly and then faded, surging back like children yelling. The sharp thorn wasn't going away from the arm. It was cold.

"You're waking. Finish it."

A painfully white ceiling. Black dots floated on it like Alora's ceiling, but they moved with my eyes and so they were not real, even as they fell down like a rain of black ink.

I moved my head. Beeping green darted up and down on a machine's reading.

Down, and there was a needle in my arm above a black strap. I couldn't move.

Above a red wet bag pulsing back and forth as if it was taken from inside someone. Tubes led from it.

Jon Cullen to the right, in front of a battery of white shapes too sharp-edged to be ghosts. It smelt of antiseptic and something metallic and sickening, stomach-turning.

He seemed almost bored. He crossed his room. "It would be simpler if you did not oblige me to sedate you. You gain nothing by drowning your own faculties."

The red bag still pulsed in the corner of my eyes. A translucent tube led to it, filled with painful bright red too bold for the white room. There was another full bag of red hanging nearby.

"I swore to Helen that you would not be physically harmed." He lowered a cold hand. Again dark eyes were frozen in his face. We looked at each other. I knew that harm could be measured in far more than that even if Helen did not. And so did her husband know.

When a human plays with an anthill by setting a foot down on it the ants cannot understand why as they scatter around. They can't know what whims prompt the experiment or what results would swiftly end it, and they die for a moment's fidget in a long human life. Nothing moved when I tried to shift my feet.

The silver needle was buried in the underside of my arm. The red dripping upward traced to it. Nothing was replaced, only taken. It was supposed to be mine.

_That's my blood and I want it back._ I was almost light-headed enough to laugh over that. Small metal circles rested on forehead and right wrist above an unbuttoned sleeve. Green measurements beeped up and down on the painful screen.

Bodhi was a demon of a long-ago time. Her brother was as ancient. Humans could not write what monsters lurked then. The huntress and the pale ascetic. Cold and translucent-skinned, pale and fair-haired, of average height for a man today, white-coated figure outlined in a laboratory. He ought to have a legend also; the cold one of waxen wings. He cut apart people to learn their secrets. Were there any before him? He was restrained and his hungers cold in his black eyes—for something beyond understanding that was more than his sister's bloodlust. Pour water on purpose into an anthill and they might mind who drowned them if they could speak.

"Memory," I heard him say. "Mere memory is nothing. Our minds are adapted to excellent recall of all knowledge we wish to impress in our brains. That which we do not require is forgotten. You began to recite passages from _this_."

It was a single cover page. Yellow words and a green biological frog. I stared blankly, my arm trying to jerk away from the thick needle cutting inside.

Topics in... I knew it with a blue cover. From a large school where they'd called me Jaime and rarely bothered to call me at all. Parts of it had interested me. A ninth-grade textbook to someone who was—claimed to be—a surgeon.

"Recitation is without meaning. Connections are more valid," Jon Icarus lectured.

_It is valid if I want you to know nothing else._ It drifted. It was wrong. Sums and figures: humans are sacks mostly full of water. There is only so much blood we can afford to lose. The same words whispered when Perdita's face came out of blood in the thin air, stripes across back and arms and legs.

I had thought of re-reading Dracula—and Mina Harker the shorthand typist would be Jenessa standing up to Bodhi, telling exactly what she thought of her, a small woman with curling dark hair—man brains of man so long not losing grace in God and the child brain that lie in tomb cannot grow to the same stature, and then they cut his throat and heart out. Myths were not helpful against the cold living stone.

Bodhi was his greatest work through all the changing years and that might sting him like a termite. Machines and devices surrounded him, covered by clean white plastic. The blood pulsed upward through the tube; a heartbeat echoed in my ears. A rag flapped back and forth and could not rise like a wing.

"Why do you think I am doing this to you?"

Blood crept away. _Feeding Bodhi a special treat. Mix it with other substances and see if it does what Adelaide did to her._

If that were the case then he would have done it directly to me and waited for it to spread. Or he'd already done that. You were supposed to escape—feel euphoric—feel like there was nothing you couldn't do—feel you were thinking faster when really you were asleep—relax—see delusions of living stone waiting hungrily over your blood, reaching out with icy fingers—

Not that which made you very quiet and flat and dutiful.

_Study it._

_Bodhi's powers are spatially limited: she reads people only when in the vicinity. She has not tested all people in the whole world through all time. She crossed paths and smelt me._

Or something else. Death was a loss of too much blood. I did not know the time left here.

"People are assumed dead for different reasons and searches would be called off for them..." I tried. "A lot of blood—if it was identifiable—if you don't take more than it would be possible for a human to shed..." Perhaps he would tell about the outside world to reprimand that; but I was wrong.

"A petty plot drawn from shallow fiction," he said—it was hard to tell what should be called cold contempt, when it was all cold.

_Bodhi's death. But she is his sister. But she has real power._

Adelaide shaped her incoherence into a weapon against futuretelling Alora and manipulating Killigan. It did not work on Jon and instead she almost beat him with her bare hands. Alora saw when she was still human. She only truly gained power later.

_Telepathy. Fortune telling. Emotional manipulation. Plant-related telekinesis._ Jon had nothing.

"Why is a raven like a writing-desk? They're nevar placed the wrong way. What has a golden heart and walls that shatter? What kind of tree grows stars on its branches?"

Maybe he created the ghost before he ground her to dust. Nobody said that either.

"Don't try to make believe. You are not at that stage of incoherence yet." He meant none of it personally; flashes of impatience were only quick in him like light on a long-blackened match.

It was painful for them to feel fire. Perhaps not painful for something to slice their stone skin.

It dripped away. He wouldn't say what he wanted. Pretending to be a block of concrete might make him stop it; might make him decide to quicken a death. I was sweating and it grew colder. It drove in the difference between human weakness and human smell and human bags of blood—sweat and filth and dirt and dust. Ashes.

I whispered that part out. Helen would know it: thorns, thistles, and sweat until you return to dust, since dust you are. He came from before it was written and there was nothing readable on his face.

"Was there anything in that or was the ghost a dream? Isn't blood mostly water—is that why holy water is in the legends? Is the mystic quality in the plasma or the iron? What in human iron makes the eyes red instead of yellow—the wrong traffic light? What did you do in the old days and under water? Are you going to walk easily over the ashes in your yard?"

"Human curiosity," the cold voice said. It bled away like ink from a broken pen. It did not stop him.

None of it could. Not screaming or begging or breaking down. He made me fade. The lights of his lab rested on the unchanging face and dark eyes. Heartbeats sparked in ragged order. It tore ribs open—no, it didn't, but at least that would be an ending—and I stopped feeling blood in limbs. It was slow and it was painful, and piece by piece the drips ground me to nothing.

There was a point to strained breathing and trying to cling to life. Water, up and down, dripping away and falling for a very long time.

Eventually the pain ended and there was nothing, not even blackness.

After rests it always comes crashing back as if that time is nothing. Cracks of light beat through a ruined eggshell like lightning. The needles had changed. There was still a breaking pain. Everything hurt. I heard pumps and beeping. Something cold across my forehead.

That was the point, of course it was the point, skittering and rattling in a mind with no blood. Break down and rebuild. I couldn't open my eyes. It waited too long and it all waited too long. There was nothing to do with the trap.

"He is probably conscious. Can you read him now?"

She answered in a sulky, high voice that rattled and sighed. "No. You know, Jon, there are humans who'd get off on this kind of scene. Trussed up on a lab table."

Jon was ice chips, water that melted away from the ear. You did not want to listen. "That's not relevant, Bodhi. Have you noticed what I have done?"

"Different smell. Whatever." As if she raised her middle finger and rolled her eyes.

"A transfusion," he lectured. "Does it lead to no change in his mind?"

A thought made a knife to throw. _If you can hear me then get me out of here. And use the word eleutheromania in a sentence._ It echoed in my own skull, sharpened and flung like a scream of pain.

She'd beat open people's heads like her brother and his needles and his tools. Nobody seemed conscious of it but that was what she was and did—a thornbush strapped to a rocket engine, a black-and-white thunderstorm snapping at everything because it was in its nature to do so. But it seemed she did not break in.

"It's like he's dead. Smells human, other humans sometimes think he's human, it's a black hole inside."

She changed and moved—a soft statue, pausing. Shifting all the while. "You made him cry. The cow would like that."

Another cold pause.

"Whatever. Your lovetoy." The edge of defiance slid back down. "Helen. You know she's into the things humans do."

"Irrelevant, Bodhi."

"Like I don't hear everything you and she do. Fine, brother. What more are you going to do to him?"

I shook; couldn't help it. Staring up at the white ceiling—only the ceiling, as if there should be a red mist there after the blood. It was cold and clammy with sweat. I felt the silver line of a different needle in a different place—saw a spooling red tube of something that went in, not away. It had to do that because hearts can't beat without blood, because the unfamiliar red soaked down. It felt like one bruise covered everywhere and went very deep. It was too cold to follow any reason but wanting to stop it hurting.

"Use your own mind, Bodhi," he said. Then a cold hand rested on the pulse of my neck. "The donor was compatible but the blood ordinary. Similar cases perished during the transformation."

"I remember," she sulked.

"It is difficult to gather sufficient statistics. Rare to see expression in a human." He kept his words short and cold and she must understand him. "The many ways there are to test its limits."

"Whatever," Bodhi said.

Everything was a limit. The contents of your skull are only your own as long as you can stop people forcing things through—there was nothing. I did not look. There was a second stab with a needle and I cried out. I saw him when I moved.

He spoke again to his sister below his harsh white lights. Something pumped into me—it was blood and it was anything he wanted. He scrambled Alora. Adelaide. I meant Adelaide.

"Jon," I heard her voice say, "he's boring like this."

I breathed harshly, drowning.

"It hurts. I can't bear it."

There were other cold hands. It was dark and that allowed rest. Another injection went into my arm, and that time the needle withdrew afterward. A warm cloth wiped my face.

Helen was pale and shadowed, and when the door closed she could not be seen. Only felt, but she had vision in darkness. She touched me with that warm soft cloth to clean the human sweat and tears, face and neck and arms.

_She's into the things humans do._ As if they knew how to cry themselves. Her hands rested below my eyes, careful as butterfly wings over the thin skin there.

"He's torturing me."

Her arms were too close. But I didn't try to stop her. She had placed me on the bed; the sheets felt warm and dry. I lay close to her. There was nothing to see.

"Jon will not do this again," Helen said, and I rested by her cold thigh, cloth-covered. In her lap.

Then it served its purpose. He showed that he could drain to the brink and bring back with his tools and that was a reason. I drowned, and he pulled me back before a final death. He had the power to do it again if he wanted.

Blood coursed through me and there was no answering pulse or soft heat in her. None of the blood my own. I carried empty, heavy bones; moving a hand creaked and rattled and splintered. In my skull it sparked an angry white sheet of light. Like lying in a church in the arms of a figure made to protect. It was half a fevered vision in the dark and true sleep would end it for a little while. Familiar shapes in impossible colors shifted inside.

Her fingers brushed below my eyes, catching tears. I wept.

"Help me. Mother," I begged, and she tried to settle my crying.

"You're but a child," the soft-flowing stream whispered.

At least she touched lightly enough to seem soft. There was blood in the air as a woman's face when the ghost ripped skin apart to open red veins below.

And the true misery and loathing of it was that I had told the truth.

Helen's cool hands traced over closed eyelids, the pulse in my temples, the line of my hair. I lay there unmoving.

"I'm not a child," I said.

—


	38. Mind Its Own Place

"Four and six."

The red pieces tripped clockwise in Alora's path along her backgammon board. One of them blotted out a black dot. She spun the silver-red dice swiftly and neatly in her hands before handing them over.

"One and three."

She giggled. "Sometimes people just aren't very lucky when they play with me."

"You play this with Bodhi."

"Yes. That's fun." The round-faced girl smiled again. "We're both the best at backgammon. She reads futures while I think of new ones. Jon sometimes—once in a long while—beats her at chess. Backgammon's more fun for me because of the dice and it's not as silly."

Alora had set up the game on the bed by a flashlight; I sat up on the pillow, cross-legged. Her bare feet swung in empty air. Skip the pieces in the only move I could to isolate a lone and vulnerable plastic black spot.

She flung her turn down in a way that seemed random. "Three and three. Double move and out goes you."

She read better when things were closer and more definite. Something in the way she rolled and passed on the dice also seemed skilled about turning the right numbers. I let a turn pass by with no moves left to me in the game.

She laughed at her next move—and I could tell she tried to make it slightly easier. Not a sign I wanted. So I moved away from the trap.

"I think my future is bright and happy," she said. Her red soldiers marched on toward their clockwise end. She'd taught it half an hour ago. "It's okay, though, Xavier. It's not like we're playing for anything important." Alora stuck out her bottom lip as if that upset her. "Having fun is important."

_This is math_, I thought, trying to keep to the numbers: the chances of rolling fair dice and the possibilities and odds that radiated out from that like a careful spiderweb, and then Alora's move as the red sped toward home...

"Gammon," Alora said. "I win again. Now play again and at least make some of your blacks fly away home from my pinks!"

Keep the lines and chances in your head like a maze—be careful—and it began close-fought.

_I have lost time. Jon made me lose time._

I tired too easily. I scratched at unhealed needle-marks below the sleeves of the shirt Alora had brought; only fluid replacements, Helen claimed. Jon prepared them. And in my head grew a wild changing maze.

"What have you been seeing lately?" I asked. Her brown eyebrows above wide yellow eyes rose in interest.

"Very little about little Monty and his friends," she said, a careful high half-singing voice. "They change what they are and maybe that is how I can't see them. Or maybe because I've never been a puppy. Maybe you have just a drop of their blood, Xavier, because I think your father comes from here. I was just thinking, watching you..."

"That what?" Six and six. A tide had changed. I'd play carefully.

"That Gordon knows how to grow such a nice mustache, and you're not like that." She gave an innocent smile and used her dice to begin a different gammon-trap.

"Nasty things can get caught in facial hair. Pickles. Egg. Tomato skins. Ham rinds." Razors were something else they had no use for: steel not sharp enough to cut out their hair, which did not grow back in any case. It would have been useful to keep a blade. Alora tried to wrinkle her stony nose.

"Some people keep things nicer than others."

"How did Jon find you?" I moved forward, escaping her trap.

"He had business as a doctor." Alora spoke high and quickly, suddenly. I changed it.

"Who put you in the asylum for seeing things?" Perhaps she'd call it a different word—madhouse or bedlam. "They put me away when I was upset."

I didn't start remembering again until after I was out of there. I was violent and destructive, the red boiling anger that was nothing like anything my mother had. Then I obeyed everything they said and the grey repeated days drowned me.

"I still have a living niece," the girl said out of nowhere, raising her head as the dice rattled against the surface of her hand. "She's old, older than the lady at the general store who uses a cane. My sister called her Daisy, which is pretty. She probably doesn't see anything that other people don't."

I tracked her and flung down the pieces. For me it was an impersonal and shapeless _they_ who had not given news about my mother; but that was hardly the typical story, was it? "If it was your family who had you taken away...that _is_ worse. They are supposed to protect you." Her cartoon-character flashlight painted her pigtails a dark red and shadowed dark lines around her face.

She raised her chin. "You're only pretending to be nice. I don't like that." Two of her own tokens skipped around the board. If she were human then she would be older than that—still the same height, wrinkles and white hair and glasses or hearing aids, pushing backgammon pieces around a nursing home.

I threw—and saw how it could trap her for a moment. I pinned two of her pieces to the center of the board.

"What do you see?" I asked again. "This one's mine."

She tilted her head to the left. "Bird eyes and blood eyes are watching us," she said, cryptically. "But Jon has a plan. Big brother Jon always has a plan."

Blood eyes. "Do I need to know about the Moirai?" She took her time to answer, opening her eyes wide and staring past the back of my skull as if I'd asked her to tell definitely. I waited.

"Maybe. The Moirai are the hand of five of the most powerful of us. They own an island nobody puts on human maps in the Mediterranean, and it's lovely." She sighed deliberately as if she wanted to remember a contented vacation. "The sands are white and the ocean so blue and it's sunny all the time. I spent years on that beautiful island learning more about how to use my gift. They love vampires with gifts—they have guards who can do so many tricks, double-jointed vampire contortionists and electric light-show vampires and two more besides Killigan who can help people be happy... Bodhi and me could join their guard any time we wanted, but we want to stay with our family." She smiled. "You know the rules they enforce, and how we're being very naughty by telling you."

Live humans aren't supposed to know. I indicated her to continue. She reached across and fiddled around in her lace bag, while I rolled dice again—the combinations spun away.

She flicked through her cards; drawing five to match. Some I had seen before. "First is Aletheia, truth for a sword. She has the power to know if you're speaking a lie."

It was her Queen of Candy Canes: dark-haired, majestic, armoured and carrying what would be a blade in another place.

"Next Anactoria, fair and lovely. And she is. She's like Bodhi, reading minds, but she touches people to do it and goes much deeper. I wonder if she'd read you? But she wants to be called only by fair and lovely, because not many vampires inspire one of the Muses to write about them."

A version of the Queen of Coins. A golden woman—gold all over like the burnished fire of the sun well-risen in bright morning, not the pale of Erin's or Jon's light features. She was lavish and rich in herself, all golden and overflowing with the coins she spun to the tint in her hair, but she would have blood-red eyes.

"Then Borea. The storm devourer. She can be very rough with people."

The Queen of Cups was wild and cragged like a cliff face in the wind, pouring out ill winds from her tumblers, dark and greying shaggy hair flying around an ancient, stern-cut face in polished brown. A dappled storm-coated horse flung up its hooves and had mane and tail whipped by fierce weathers in her background.

"Semele, of gorgon's hair. She's pretty too, and she knows a lot about how to use gifts." The Queen of Wands was slender as a willow branch and smooth-faced as liquid concrete. A cloud of mahogany around her head separated itself into a hundred limbs like the branches of a tree. Her heavy-lidded features were barely visible in the pasteboard of the tarot card: thin lines of black. Beyond the branches of her hair there was only darkness in the background.

The fifth card would have to be something different, and Alora shuffled them all again to draw.

"And Erichthonius. The rift. She's...quiet."

It was no person but a black tower struck by pale lines that reddened to blood. Lightning from one way of looking at it, and then becoming dug pits that sparked into deep earth. Or the lines of bloody, blue-red veins that struck into a person's skin.

"Even the humans on the isle seem so happy most of the time. They sing songs in their language. Why aren't you happier? It would be nicer if Killigan's gift worked on you, like it does on me." She sounded innocent as if it truly bewildered her.

No doubt there were drugs in Jon's collection that would accomplish the same thing. Too much like Adelaide.

"The humans are there to be cattle," I said. I remembered Veronica's words of the rebels and prisoners on the cliffs. "But that's not very nice...?"

Humans barely allowed to know there was a rest of the world. Toiling for rulers who ate them at whim and—rarely—selected acceptable livestock to attempt to transform.

And despite that there were those among them who would know eleutheromania—even the parts of the word. Freedom from empusa beasts.

"I didn't eat anyone while I was there. Only sheep. Even when they didn't taste nice," she justified herself. "Helen and Jon already taught me how to be nice."

"Jon wanted to teach you other things."

Alora pushed the ceramic mug back at me. "It's your turn to roll the dice. Or even draw two cards to tell you where you can move. That would be just as fun."

And so I drew a two of wands—ivory, supple things both blown around in a wild midnight wind—and four of cups, a pink fountain flowing from four corners. The paintings on Alora's cards were beautiful and closely detailed, needing a squint to try and study them in the half-light. The vampires could see but not read in the dark, and they were blind as any human in absolute dark: low-light vision did not serve in a complete absence of light, and clever as their senses they were not whales or bats or dolphins.

Alora did not paint her own cards. Helen's introduction was different to the rest of her book. Antony played music that already existed. Jon's magnum opus was very old.

"They killed you a long time ago. It killed a lot of who you were." A pale stone statue of a girl who hadn't reached her sixteenth birthday—glittering, and perhaps hollow. She tried to echo humanity with games and happiness. Jon came to her asylum before she died. "I think important parts of you are dead and that's why you don't understand."

Not entirely true. Bodhi would resent being told it would be wonderful if only someone could force her to be a happy prisoner.

Alora pursed her mouth together. "I wish you'd be a little nicer to people. It's good that you don't think you should be one of us. Some humans are silly. I can see what would happen."

Again she reached for the dice.

"Roll a six on the first try, Xavier, and maybe you don't die. And I want _you_ to try it."

I could choose; I played her game. A three, a two, a four.

"We forget," Alora said, deliberately slowly in her high voice, eyes golden in her light. "Almost everything that meant anything to us as a human. What grass and spring sunshine feel like to warm skin. The look of your own room at home. Or maybe I forgot those at the beginning of when they locked me up, when they used shocks and other things." She didn't stop her speech. "It's easy for a vampire to lose control and drink all the blood. Your heart breaks at the beginning. Imagine the worst pain you ever knew and multiply it by infinity. Then imagine it for three days. That's what changes you, and no wonder so many give up."

I'd already given up with brother Jon. Pain becomes a memory quickly and can never be recaptured while thinking about it—but fear of it remains.

"Three days of incredible pain. And at the end of it there is bloodlust."

Facing my own death, Bodhi said.

"Newborns awake with the red eyes of their own blood. They are stronger than anything else. They're almost unstoppable, and they can't think of anything else but blood," Alora said, and looked beyond my skull.

"So imagine that, Xavier. Pain as you have never known before, bloodlust, strength and swiftness beyond anyone's ability to hold you back, even Bodhi, and fragmented memories, of where you would run to seek comfort..."

I knew. Of course I knew. I covered my ears with my hands.

There was nowhere I would rather run to than that grey room in Seattle, because of who was there for me.

"Your mother, of course," I heard without hearing.

Helen's arm around me was never warm.

Everything.

—

They were unstoppable statues mistaken for gods.

Tigers with smiles on their faces.

_All men are mortal and if I am a man then I must die._

Tomorrow you will die. A human life is a vapor for a little time that vanishes away. A pigeon crossing a lighted room for one shining moment before the darkness.

_Mom. I can't tell you everything that's happened_, I composed in my head. _I'd like to. Everything has changed and no matter what happens nothing will ever go back to the way it was._

_I should have known that a long time ago._

_I didn't choose any of this._

If I'd known the last time I saw my mother I'd have...I'd have not wanted to do anything different. Sat by her and talked and read to her and stayed as long as it was possible.

_It's going to change. It's going to change in a lot of ways._

They'd barely let me out of the room of late. Not outside with Helen. The marks of what Perdita had done were almost gone from me.

I sat in their windowless basement with one of Helen's books, _Of the Dead and of the Resurrection_—but there were more practical things to learn than Protestant theology. I was glad not to face Alora again.

Killigan sat and read a history book on World War I—as far as the cover said. He was the one who talked of easily snapping neckbones. None of them were good to provoke.

Antony wore a watch on his left wrist, below stiff-ironed white cuffs of his shirt, across the room. It was disorienting not to know day or night—hard to be with no sign of sunlight. Better not to take the attention of the two of them. Antony read—not what I would have expected—a medical textbook, nerves and signals, glaring at the pages as if he understood it. Only the two of them to avoid. I watched: they both managed to look young enough for school. Killigan's hair and beard were red-brown and curled. A shaven vampire was a defeated vampire. Once a soldier, Helen said; both of them. They killed people while they were still human. I fiddled with the edge of a page between my fingers; the paper was old and durable.

The essence of the soul consisting in thought and this cannot perish by annihilation, for the nature of a human soul and of God—that the principles of blood are salt and sulphur and spirit and earth and water—an intangible hope of something beyond. The words were careful and structured and offered no present help. Only a human soul.

"Humans make too much noise. Stop breathing." It was Killigan who spoke. A broad-planed face without a hint of red below it; it was difficult to see the color of his small, deep-set eyes, but they were more light than dark—and not scarlet.

"A little difficult."

He looked at me; and didn't need to say, _I could do that for you_. Sometimes they had accidents. Sometimes even Alora had accidents. She tried to make it sound like untrained pets.

His type didn't respond well to shows of fear. I said nothing more. They could read small changes—breath or sudden tensing or pulse. Even as a vampire—the kind who talk so readily of killing as if they enjoy it—animals.

"You spark a hunger. You leave your scent wherever you walk here." His voice was level. He did not seem quick-tempered like Bodhi or Antony—but certainly not calm like Helen. Antony watched and said nothing yet. "I hunt animals because they have the sense to run. I like that."

_Still. Be very still._ He must be able to sense fear.

I shrugged—trying to imagine it a dismissive gesture. "I'm sure you have fun."

Not needing to blink was a reason for an impressive unmoving stare like a skink below a kicked-up rock.

"Close your mouth."

He couldn't order me to do that.

"Hunting in the sunlight on your days off from school—sparkling like a glitter bomb all the while. Monty thinks that part of it's hilarious—"

"The puppy would say so," Killigan growled back. He sat up, the book lowered in his hands. It was the same stupidity people had—not getting up and walking away when that was simplest. Because some hate being seen as if they're backing down. He looked obviously up and down, closer to watching a piece of raw meat than any real person. "I could break each bone in your body."

_It's less impressive when you can all do that. Then again, there are some very small ones—congratulations on your anatomy skill—_

"You should get some fresh air," I pushed.

Then Antony flung down his own book. I startled. Temper flared in his yellow eyes—he was wound like a clock spring turned too far. His wires spiraled too tightly together, not quite rusting and ready to shatter. Yet his control was supposed to be stronger.

"The halfwit tries to provoke you. He deserves to be locked in the dark he created. You will come with me before my brother loses his temper."

_No. This is bad._ Antony took hold of my upper arm, moving so quickly across the room it was too hard to track with human eye. The stone grip was harsher than Helen's.

"I could be quiet. No talking while reading."

"You will be."

In the corridor he released me with a shove. I rubbed my arm. The wall was behind me; it wouldn't have been easy to dodge past Antony even if he were human. There was a trick to taking up space and throwing around your weight. He carried himself tall but thrust his shoulders always forward—like a performing gorilla.

"Helen trusted you to lock me up again?" I got out. "You'd—it's the same. You want to think of yourself as someone who wouldn't eat people. Except when Veronica suggests it—"

He paced closer—as if he was going to touch, and I flinched back. He spoke again. "Helen trusts me because I control myself. Because we understand the meaning of values and standards. Of which degenerates such as you are always remarkably unaware."

Animals might well be more interesting for them to hunt since they would never give in to their glamor and would run like sensible creatures. And from the other side—to face a mountain lion or bear instead of Antony would never be talked with.

"You'd be afraid of pain too if you could feel it," I reminded him, trying to look into yellow-white eyes—there was still the memory of Antony's eyes rolling and protruding from a mixing bowl like boiled eggs. I knew him at his weakest.

Like Bodhi he didn't enjoy insults to strength or courage, it seemed. "At your age I was a soldier," he rapped out. "I fought honorably as a human. I earned an officer's commission in battle—"

"A Confederate, right? Or am I guessing wrong?" I interrupted. My second guess would have been the Revolution—but that was before they came here. Or the one with Canada. "They lost..."

He looked annoyed. I managed to step back but still faced him.

"A noble cause. It was something beyond oneself—unlike your petty whining. You fight for nothing," he said, stonelike. "You might as well be nothing."

"Treating people like cattle." He'd fought for slavery but thought of Veronica as a queen above him, a foreign aristocrat— I changed and slowed. He heard it. "I know all about being a parasite. I might as well admit it."

"So you do acknowledge it."

"Scamming charities. Petty shoplifting," I listed. "Picking strawberries for two dollars an hour. Never giving a true name for anything. General parasites on human society."

"Feeble-minded and debased. I know it." Antony paused. He was held for a moment.

"Avoiding discovery. Going to a lot of different schools briefly. Like going to high school eighty-six times? Like living in a house that humans built? Like reading human books and playing human music? Parasites on the edge of humanity. We both know all about that." I finished.

He startled forward—his thick forearms and wrists tensed. Anger in him should be frightening to a human.

Then his right fist slammed into the wall by my head. I felt plaster chips fall like white rain against my face. His mouth twisted and his eyes blazed and bulged in golden anger.

"We need nothing from you. We eat animals—act like one though you do—and nothing from you. We are stronger; our memories last; nothing you can do can harm us—"

Except that they burned. Napalm. Falls from heights, probably. Eyes. Physics. Slippery stuff on the ground. Dynamite. Heavy rockets. Thinking of that gave me enough to stand there and watch him still.

"As to you in the human world, none mourn your loss." His voice softened. He leaned too close, face close, hand rooted in the wall by my head. I felt nothing—he was cold. No body heat and only that sickly-sweet scent in his mouth. "You were a burden to your father and a misshapen monster to your peers. Nothing more," he said with satisfaction—too much satisfaction, if I'd bothered to think.

It rushed through me like a sudden spring of fresh blood. "That's not true. J—someone. When I was nearly run over, she asked if I was okay before saying anything else." Jenessa was brilliant and bold and brazen and very human, and she treated me like a friend, a memory strong enough to last in this place— "That's not nothing, I..."

I stopped. Too cutting for him. "You're only quoting something your girlfriend said. And you think I'm pathet—"

"Wife. She is my wife." Antony raised his voice—anyone in the house should have heard. "We have had several human ceremonies. Veronica was an imperial princess in her own country. As far above you as the evening star." His right hand rose toward my neck.

"Nearly executed for treachery—" I supplied. There had been fragments about her. "She glamors people. Most people just think she's pretty and move on but you, you worship her, you're _exactly_ like me but only in rev—"

And then I could not speak at all, because Antony punched me. I slid across Jon Cullen's white hallways, hip and shoulder scraping against the ground, and lay curled around my stomach. It hurt a lot more than I had expected. It hurt and made it impossible to breathe. Fire consumed my chest—was nothing broken? I couldn't tell. He must have pulled it in any case or the fist would have gone all the way through the spine. A curtain had fallen from a high-set window behind and bright sunlight leaked through it, dazzling and warm on the floor. Antony's footsteps rung across the ground toward me, echoing one by one, his face staring implacably down.

My hands twitched. The ribs burst and ached but felt together. Before he came for another try I took a breath in pain. The words ripped ragged from me.

"You won't...you won't do it again." It didn't halt the steps. "Because—you're strong and I'm weak. You hit me once and you won't do it again." The words wheezed out like trying to summon blood from the stomach. He heard them, whispered though they were.

The feet—booted—paused close to me. He looked down with stone-set features and unsparing words with them. The light caught him and he shone like a crystal statue. "I have executed guilty humans before. I saw you attempt to assault Alora in a fit of pique."

"Attempt...to." Legs jerked up to cover torso, head trying to move in; a human's instinct to protect even when there was nothing that could.

"I know it well," Antony said, and once more he was closely satisfied. "A toady to those above and bully to those you see below. Your kind is a coward and likely worse. But," he continued, standing still in his place, "I will take you to Jon."

I realized. "No. That's not necessary. You—" And I stopped. "Don't touch me. Don't touch me."

_You win that one._

"I have to ensure that you are not injured," Antony said, and bent down.

—

"Arnica paste. Apply it to yourself."

Again it was the sterile white of his laboratory. He hadn't imprisoned me this time. The machines were still and worrying; the smell was antiseptic rather than blood with no sign of what had happened. The ceiling was white and stainless as ever. Needles were sheathed in a stand. Bottles waited behind glass, and white drawers were sealed shut. I stared at the magnified slide he had displayed on a screen from a microscope: a brilliant-colored animal cell grown large, red and green and electric blue, changing while something pierced the wall of it. I could tell nothing more.

The gel smelt crisp and soft, pine-like. There was a label over the jar. It still ached to breathe. I carefully touched the forming bruise again—better this than them. I'd had to unbutton the shirt. Antony watched from the other wall. Jon stared at his—whatever experiment it was.

"I own that I punished him," Antony's low voice rumbled.

"No doubt unprovoked," Jon answered him, his back turned.

"You understand."

"Of course I do. You may go." Jon Cullen dismissed him in a few words—Antony the military officer, standing straight-backed with folded arms—and carefully he closed the door behind him. Sounds were sealed inside this place, I noticed. Nothing echoed far. The white walls ate sound.

Blood vessels tightened around my ribs. Jon summoned another slide for himself, cold and careful. He was frozen and paralyzing to watch. The gel was cooler than the room, and a touch pained the red mark.

"You don't want to change me. Alora says it would only be an unstable monster," I said into the quiet, looking around Jon and not at him. "That makes this very finite."

"The mentally unstable make poor vampires. Were you foolish enough to think it would be anything else?" he asked, back turned over his experiments, cool and incisive as a scalpel. "To control the impulses in the presence of humans at all requires an initial sanity. Humans with unrestrained compulsion make poor vampires: especially if that compulsion is to kill for the sake of it. A common flaw in a certain kind of human."

_I'm not worried about what I do. I'm concerned about being caught for it._

"So I imagine." _Adelaide. Perdita._ "Bodhi wants—I'm not sure that she's sure. Nothing pleasant."

There was something that penetrated and changed the cell. Perhaps it was meant to be a virus. Jon stared at the projection and saw the detail.

"My sister embraces her primitive past," he said, as if abstracted. "Do you have any idea what that time was like? I was obliged to invent writing for my researches. After my death other humans nourished similar ideas. The net sum of human knowledge was less than a single printed newspaper you throw unread in a garbage pail. Is it surprising that I moved to this?"

He didn't need to show what he meant. It was akin to time travel, unchanged and cold while the rest of the world altered itself. There weren't records of those times; cave paintings of bison dancing, scrawled in ochre and manganese. I remembered the liquid dance of the language Bodhi said he no longer recalled.

"You were born to this millennium and to the most advanced country in the world, child. Would you trade it for furs and flints and an early grave?"

I was used to cities. I waited, sitting up and folding my arms.

"The past two hundred years. The past twenty years. The sum of knowledge increases exponentially—and yet certain standards prohibit all possible advantages taken of it." A glint of yellow eyes was reflected back from a glass lens. Again the slide changed and he stared as if to commit it to memory. Helen and probably the human rules kept him—mostly—from human experimentation. Not nearly enough.

"I was ahead of my time. The bargain I struck gave me the chance to know all. The accumulated sum of all relevant knowledge is engraved in my mind: our careful, our slow-changing, our stone minds." His voice dropped to something slow and reflective—ice slopes that reflected a brilliant light, and that tried to coax a slide deeply downward. He tortured, but stone could not feel pain. "Consider what this world will become in another septmillenium."

"Helen wants to save the planet from itself because none of you want cattle to die off." It was only sulking; he did not trouble to reply to that. Probably for Helen it was closer to preserving the rare spotted chiming cyanea tree or the blunt-nosed pygmy iguana, but that didn't matter. "Yes. That is a temptation," I said. "I've always liked to read. My mother raised me to value it. I've liked—some classes. So to know everything and fear nothing..."

"To know is power. To remain a greater power," Jon said with careful logic. "My knowledge will exist long after you are dust and barely a memory. Immortality is the only power."

Except there are capacities to lose and capacities to gain for it. Everyone thinks he is a talented doctor and cold method works for him—but when he shaped Bodhi and her powers he was still red-filled with living blood...

"Death purifies the instincts. Only the essential drives of the old life remain. Mine is to acquire knowledge. You are familiar with your own, boy, or ought to be." He didn't turn back—perhaps he seemed less frightening this way—but he would be aware of every move and painful breath.

Instincts. Flight or fight. Everything I had was tuned to flight: flee rather than make a pointless stand. Run for it. You don't have to stay anywhere when you can choose something else.

If even Bodhi could not hold back newmade strength and immunity to her power then they could all be burned.

"Yes," I said, and my mouth slipped to bare teeth. "I know that."

Perhaps Jon caught the smile at the vision of a purple fire and a breath of their ashes. Enough power and no restraint to kill.

But that wasn't what would happen. I unrolled my hands: blood added red and blue tints to the skin and a pulse beat inside them. I'd do anything to make it stop hurting. I'd fly to her for comfort and—a monster was a monster.

My mother was in a place they could not reach.

This pain burned—it would become a dark bruise—and each breath reminded me of it. But it was a form of pain that lived. Broken flesh and spoiled roots and swollen floodwaters and a wretched ruin inside, overripe berries bleeding dark ruined juice under a blistering sun. And for all that there was something that surged below, worms wriggling and rising from the mess and feeding on the waste. I did not want to die. There were conditions which could not be lived through, but here there was living blood that seeped into the skin to paint it indigo.

"Instincts can be altered, in time," Jon Cullen's cold voice promised. "Time is one's servant with the power to remain."

Except to do that—and I looked at my hands, and remembered a warm arm about my shoulders—meant to give up something of value.

Life or knowledge or warmth or power or light and ice and stone.

"I don't know," I said, voice cracking over it, and he saw it as only a weak-minded cry.

—


	39. Foreign Constellations

"_What did your last boyfriend die of?"_

"_You know, I never thought our kind could die of exhaustion._"

—

The blanket was tangled and the corner of the room cold and angled. There was nothing to see. If I was tired enough then strange colors floated in front of my eyes.

Think; run through all that could be remembered; fall back and escape by sleep. Three times, but never too long; a spiced smell had woken me and there'd been food in plastic left by the door. Someone had come while I'd slept. Unlikely to be Helen since she would try to cook. And perhaps she would have sat by me with light for a time.

Perhaps it was meant for punishment. I'd destroyed the light myself. No sense of time passing and a feeling that you may as well be blind. Or be blinded like an eyeless fish the moment light crept in again. I crouched in the corner furthest from the door and did not try to count the time to wait.

_I know how to wait. I know how to twist a mind elsewhere._

I talked to myself and heard it barely echo back and imagined another human in the room. The air might be stale and old, smells trapped inside. I ran hands over each other, paced quickly around and counting each time on the four corners, spoke the words of books from school—the song of Saint Elene. A man called Abhard and a woman called Emma were killed then. One in place of Helen's forgotten sins and the other for Bodhi. I was not among them but this was a slow decay.

Surely it had counted to days in the dark.

The metal floor fell away to something softer and easier, and I walked further than I should have been able. It was utterly dark, and then came a crack of dawn from black mountains in the far horizon.

The sun rose, and the sky was the wrong color. It was blue and bright—though it didn't hurt the eyes, and it was an earthly sky—but it was no color I had ever looked up to see above any journey. The air was still and cool, and either too thin or thick, floating like the small shapes over the eyeball. There was the shape of a straggling tree—like a skeleton, branches curving into fingerbones, empty of leaves with straggling grey buds.

Day turned as easily to night and leaves blew in a cold wind, curved and pointed into as strange shapes as anything else. I thought it was a dirt road, wide wheelmarks softening the ground. And in the night sky stars that made no map I knew waited.

A slight film of clammy moisture hung on my forehead and it was utterly dark again. I woke to a sudden pain in the bruise. Nothing had changed. I felt across the room again and sat down to wait. Unfamiliar skies and a blast of a wind free to go where it would. Even in coldest winters with a thin jacket a sweep of bitter wind could make you feel alive by its flight. A kite, a bird, taken away and above it all.

I'd said I could live with the dark. I closed my eyes again.

And after a long time it was Bodhi who broke it.

The last time she strangled me and gave me to her brother. Behind her there was a grey-blue wall—if it was natural light it was morning or late—and she was a black silhouette in the open way.

"Wanting another diversion? Bored again so soon?" I stood. Her brother did not seem to be with her.

"You want to come out before the cow gets around to returning—or not?" Bodhi held out a pale hand.

"Come right in."

_Said the spider to the fly._

She opened a door painted the same smooth neat white as most of her brother's walls. I would have expected Bodhi to live in a sort of barbaric luxury, excess flung everywhere, trophies and rubbish and body parts from prey she hunted half-mounted on walls with flies crawling over them, old blood and car parts and samples of everything shiny and useless that money could buy. But instead her room was a bare wood-panelled space larger than Alora's territory. Her floor was utterly clear and the walls empty, and the outside wall nothing but space. Thick glass without curtains was all there was before the back garden and the woods beyond, ivy-coated in all directions from the outside. A blue evening's light was free to spread itself into the corners. Thin, polished slats of a dark brown wood formed walls and floor and inlaid closets. A long rectangular area was sectioned off with red tape as the only marking on the floor. She'd painted her ceiling jet black in spite of the light that must come from that window in day; it matched the single sheet on an iron-ornamented double bed. There was one shelf to break the bare walls, in the space of the red-taped rectangle, and that was a holder for the weapon she had taken to kill Carl. It drew my eyes as the only thing there. I saw again the pale sword made of something that looked like bone, the blue-sheened fur at the hilt and sharp incisors laid like saw's teeth into the lower edge of the blade.

"It's called the Kumbhakarna. I ordered it made." She took it down in a single swift movement, holding it in her right hand. "The thighbone of a human giant who was turned to one of our kind—briefly. Only our kind can cut each other."

She swept it around, and it became a white blur in the air. A pale sphere covered her with a thousand cuts, whirled so fast it became an illusion. Briefly I wondered if the giant she'd taken it from could still feel the sword. Then a graceful strike forward—and the sharp tip hovered a millimeter from embedding into her wall. Not far from my neck. I stepped aside from it, a single hair of mine caught and cut by one of the downward fangs—carefully attached into the white bone. They didn't come from anything that looked human. Monty hadn't voiced any objections at the time to them.

She beckoned with her right hand. "I'll teach you how to throw a punch."

The taped place was a practiceground for her. She faced me, letting the sword rest in her left hand. "At least you know to keep your thumb out of the way. Get your leg back and use that for force. And it does more damage if you don't keep your knuckles even—index and middle in front— That's pathetic. Even for a human."

"I know you're strong. But I don't like hitting women." I wanted to see them burn; but except for her now-yellowing eyes and too-smooth pale skin Bodhi looked human, and not quite as tall as my shoulders. Her stance was a touch too statue-like.

"Chauvinist pig," she said, the corners of her lips twisting slightly upward. "Female vampires aren't weaker. Jon thinks we're more likely to have powers."

Bodhi and Alora and Helen and the Moirai weighed against Killigan and possibly Carl; they also said there were male servants of the Moirai with powers. If most gifts were mentally based there should not be too much difference between male and female minds.

"There's no point to this, in any case." I lowered my hands and turned to her wide window. The last of the daylight still hung in the air and the sunset blazoned distant clouds orange. The ivy masked the garden below, trees grown closely together with wind in the leaves. No sound entered the thick glass; it looked too heavy to easily break, panels outlined by dark grey steel. "I couldn't harm one of you and a human could come back with more than bare hands."

It was probably the idea of a fight with someone whose mind she could not read that she wanted. I ignored it; flight rather than fight. Outside there was no clear way beyond, with the thickness of the trees in Helen's garden; no distinct border between that and the woods. A very remote house. Blood eyes and bird eyes. Perhaps there was still some human walking in the distance, since the light was not dead yet.

There were two figures there after all, below a delicate thin-branched tree with trembling light-colored leaves. Not two who would offer help, and they did not look up. Helen had been gone for her human masquerade of late, returning to her garden. Jon faced her, standing very close.

It was hard to see into the dusk but his pale face was turned only toward her. A hand reached up, slowly and definitely, to the back of her head. One by one he plucked out the pins that held back her hair. Helen did nothing to stop him. The careful red-gold coronet tumbled down in a river below her waist, brightened by the last light of sunset and dappled by the shade of her tree. Two statues leaned close to each other in some inhuman intangible ritual old as time. An icy shudder set itself in the back of my neck.

"Who wants to know," Bodhi said with careful disgust, "about the mating rituals of common bovinae primigenius?"

"Nothing blocks what you hear in your head?" I looked back at her. "Glass can stop hearing; there's something for most senses..."

She made an impatient noise. "If there is they don't know it yet. Come down. I'll show another way Jon pretends to be human and get away from this."

_There's lots of minds to confuse her—and probably similar-seeming electric pulses could come from some sort of machine—and distance, of course. General distractions._

_And whatever lies in my mind._

"We-do-not-drink-_vine_," Bodhi mocked. Bottles darkly—and dust-coated—glinted from wooden shelves in a small storeroom. "Jon's stupid fucking around playing rich guy. Showing off to the few humans he asks home."

"Alcohol. Why not?" I squinted at a yellowing label with looping, scrawled writing. Too hard to read in the dark. "Got any candles?" That felt like the right sort of light for old bottles.

She wasn't gone long enough to make any escape. Two unused, utilitarian candles: the sort humans buy in case the electricity goes out. I borrowed her lighter and gave her the first flame. Bodhi held the candle below her chin with both hands, setting hollowed shadows below her cheekbones. Her golden eyes swam in the flickering light that gave them a liquid, orange sheen. It was a tiny room, forcing anyone to stand closely; and dark when she closed the door like a child trying to hide a crime.

"Sangiovese rosa," I read on a shelf high above her head, and reached up to take the brown-tinted bottle. The cork was stiff. Then the taste was bitter dust and smoke; I tried not to cough and splutter. Bodhi watched with a challenge in her eyes.

"You and Jon weren't the first vampires, were you?" I asked her. The candleflame continued to burn in her hands, wax melting on her skin like a disease, across the translucent grey of the fluid stone that shaped her. She and her brother were alike in their strange paleness; the others he had changed were not spoken of as different to the rest.

She answered, her voice soft and reflective over it. "These days there's not many older at all. The Big Ems—the Moirai—are a bunch of fucking kids compared to Jon and me. But there's one other I know about around still. I saw him only once and it was a long distance away. They call him the Old Man of the Mountains. Somewhere in the Himalayas. They say he doesn't need to drink at all to scrape an existence. They say his skin is soft as milk and transparent as glass. They say he slept for ten thousand years in an ice tomb. They say the one who turned him was called Lamash-tu, and she was even older. Maybe she was the first one. Maybe we just spread pathetic gossip and get at least half of it wrong the same as humans do." She passed that away into the distance—like lore and legend.

"Alora told me about the Moirai." I lowered the wine bottle.

"I know. She left off that Anactoria's only the cut-rate version of me," Bodhi boasted. "That Aletheia hasn't even got a real power. Bitch thinks she does—but I think she's lying to herself and it's intuition. Pathetic."

"And versions of Killigan. With powers that can be used to brainwash people." Flickering shadows hung around the dusty bottles, candles in yellow with a bright blue heart—and then darkness in the centre. The red wine shifted back and forth, softly.

"Sure. Utari and Samiah. What's it to you?" she asked.

A distant white-sanded island that ran on human slaves and scarlet-eyed monsters. "Curiosity. And you keep saying that Jon made a bargain to change, but never any details."

Bodhi tilted her head sideways; for the time being she was oddly still for her, pausing longer rather than in constant quest for novelty. She'd sat cross-legged and facing me. "It was a long time ago and he never told me in full. We forget a lot. Nobody can remember everything. He bled me out and made sure I'd rise more powerful than anyone else. Let it rest there." She held up the candle. "Shouldn't you use these for the wine? It's something humans do—you decant it with a candle. It doesn't taste of anything for us unless we have a human drink it first."

There was nothing they could do to me drunk that they couldn't do otherwise. Alcohol warmed the extremities and softened things for a limited time. I held the candle by the bottle and saw the light reflected in the murky liquid.

"Warms it," I said. I crumbled a part of cork into the candle's flame and watched it blacken. The glass heated slowly; glass tumblers could explode with heat but not like this. I tilted up the wine again, briefly.

"You think I'm trying to get you drunk first?" she challenged. She was toying once more.

"They say drink increases inclination but prevents implementation—lechery in particular. Even Shakespeare said it." The taste was nothing like beer; the bitterness should mean alcohol. I held my candle down by the label again. Sangiovese. Exsanguination. No; there couldn't possibly be a sickening sense of her brother's humor in that name. I put it down.

"I like the one with the cannibalism best," Bodhi said thoughtfully, off on a tangent. "Titus. Don't you know it? People get stuffed into pies and executed and sacrificed and massacred in battle and have their tongues and hands cut off so they can't tell anyone about being raped—but she orchestrated her bloodthirsty revenge anyway. The best one Will ever wrote."

I stood, reaching for a different bottle. "Were you around when the plays originally..."

"Still in Africa, listening to Ronnie sweettalk Jon into letting her squirm out of plotting against the Solomonid emperor with her head still on her neck." Bodhi rolled her eyes. "Like we'd know how to be on the spot at the moments people are going to think were interesting later."

It read something-trvs or trus in blotted red ink, a dust-coated year ending in 46. Probably a nineteen if the printing was anything to go by. Bodhi watched.

"Something tells me you're not much good at this. I hope Jon has a cow when he finds out what you've done to stuff that cost half a mint."

More ashes and dust with an overtone of wood chips. I took the time to taste it carefully. He'd more likely blame her.

"How do you know that, Bodhi?" I said. "It's clearly a vintage seasoned by dust bunnies caught in rust from fifteenth-century Florentine cavalier's armor and smoke from charcoal-dyed silk burned in a driftwood fire. Probably eighteen-sixty-six from the tiny vineyard village of Doshombres."

She scowled. "You're joking. You're definitely joking. It's not that easy to tell with you."

"You have any vodka?" I lined it up by the other bottle—after another sip. It was a darker red and more thick.

"That's what little boys ask for if they want people to think they're men."

"Um, rum? Tequila?"

Bodhi pounced on something in the shelves. "That's the sort with the worm. Here you go—if you can drink it all to the last drop—" She shook a bottle which she lighted from below—a small round mass at the bottom of it. Con gusano.

"Pass."

"You're not like Leon. He'd do it." She replaced the bottle—maybe hesitating over trying to prove something. "Every time, every fucking school dance. He and Hari spike the punch and everyone but puking hypocrites like Craterface get drunk and stupid and boring."

"Whereas you want drunk and transparent here. Translucent. Turn wine into glass instead of water into wine. The experiment is unlikely to succeed, or that brother of yours would have tried it already."

I was going to drink it. I wanted to. The alcohol started to warm from the inside.

"Cancelled it this time," Bodhi said moodily, twirling a heavy bottle between the fingers of one hand—a human could not balance that so finely. It was the first news of outside I had heard in a long time. "Your fault. They kind of do that when students go missing. And after I tested whether Yoshi'd dump Immy for me.

"Would you have gone if I'd asked you?" She leaned forward; this time the flame's light lingered over the black paint on her lips, heavy-layered in places.

"Especially not then."

"You'd rather seduce the fucking cow. Or Monty. Little Monty-Monty?"

Stone deceiving, and...and a friend. For God's sake grant strength against enemies.

"You're bored again. I don't want to..." I spoke again, quickly. "Seven thousand. I've seen things that maybe you haven't; but you've read most people you ever met. Or ate. Perhaps you shouldn't bother."

"Oh, but Jon is," Bodhi said composedly. I saw the candlelight lick at her shoulder, and at a strand of black hair upon it; but nothing burned. Only the serum inside them would. "He knows your mom's maiden name. Ivarra, wasn't it? C. Ivarra."

"And so do I. Because he does his research." Wax melted slowly. She tried something else—flashing forward, speaking in that high voice to provoke something. I watched the changing play of yellowed light on her skin.

"Worked in genetics stuff before she quit the system. The company name was Virbion, wasn't it? Jon noticed that."

"And strangely enough that also I know. Your brilliant deductions amaze—"

"So you're her clone, aren't you?" she said.

I choked on some of the bitter wine.

"A secret experiment. Explains the weird blood." Bodhi ticked it off, the black heavy bottle still tripping through her fingers. "Jon watches humans for new weapons—he caught up on Virbion before. You're your mother's clone grown in a lab."

I could feel my laughter echoing off the narrow walls. I barely tried to stop it. "What movies have you been watching lately? That's—do you really have no idea why that's impossible? Among the many obvious reasons?"

Light glistened off Bodhi's determined, pointed chin. "There are identical twins in the Moirai who are a brother and sister. Meskah and Ismail. Low-tech version of gender-switched clones. They've powers, he can torture people by thinking about it and she blocks your senses— It's possible, I'm way less ignorant of bio than Mizz Harper likes to think."

More of the red-eyed ones: the brainwashers as well as the torturers. "Wonderful for them," I said, "but you really don't have any idea of your brother's plans. Not at all."

"Jon keeps thinking in the languages I don't know," Bodhi said, "but that only keeps things interesting."

_Which is the last thing wanted by me._

They couldn't get to my mother behind security cameras and guards and monitored visiting times, and if they did I would know. Bodhi would gloat about it. No need to let her see any more where she could cut.

I'd chosen to let her drive away with me and sit here trapped with her.

"You balance your brother," I told her, raising the wine in some awkward toast. If this was drunkenness then it gave her no gateway yet into my head. "A huntress where he is patient. A demon where he waits and watches. Bold where he's cold. I like that honesty better. It's not that you've killed people, it's that you could kill me. Or your brother could do worse, but please don't try to get ideas. It's not that you're a monster. It's that you can't grow up; and yet you're much older than I'll ever be. It would be fascinating if it didn't hurt. The serum preserves your body, overtakes all your cells but differentiates external from internal among others, and allows your brain to add new paths at a slower pace that keeps you from psychological maturity." Too much jargon there and I'd sound too much like Ms Enn. Shifted sediment rolled through my mouth like mud flakes. "And lets your mind sometimes have power to perceive or reshape parts of reality."

For that reason perhaps Killigan's or Helen's abilities were the more impressive than Alora's or Bodhi's. Reading things was ineffective without the ability to alter the world around; but Bodhi more than made up for that by physical power. And something that went further than that. Perhaps it could be called presence or willpower or force of character—something indomitable and wild inside her that could be halted by nothing. I'd seen her with bloody eyes and disturbed mind and without. Even as a sea of bloodied ash she'd swirl in the air and cut through people like living dust—

I stayed myself, I kept myself away from the knives of her mind reaching where none should, and I might understand some things. It gave me almost no power against them.

"You must be getting drunk, but it doesn't sound any crazier than usual," Bodhi said skeptically. "I wouldn't be able to tell if I hadn't seen you."

It felt the warmest I had been in this house. A golden ball spun inside me. Words still seemed to fit together, and it was easy to speak.

"In vino veritas, I suppose. You probably know how to really pronounce that. There's a lot you have that nobody else does—except for your brother." That would come too close to _It would be simpler for you to bury me in Helen's garden_. "You get whatever you want..."

She took onto that with her usual fierceness. "Which makes it more fun when I don't immediately."

And then a stone hand rested on mine—unlike Alora's small round fingers. Bodhi leaned over me, far too closely, and her hand ran up my forearm. It was a light touch for her—but in no way gentle. Her fingertips danced like spiders.

"I don't like being touched. You're statues. You don't feel human at all. But I've learned to be afraid of you by now. Stop it. I'm sure you only do...exactly what you want to do."

She'd backed off sometimes in the past. She had. The bitter dark red clung to the underside of my tongue.

Bodhi's voice was sickly-sweet flutesong. "You think I haven't taken what I wanted before? But it's always humans who think up the most terrible ways to wreak harm. The ways I ripped mortals open in the bad old days was nothing compared to all the tortures and weapons of death you've invented since then. You've no idea what I've learned inside human minds."

_I don't approve. I don't approve of that at all._ It was a cold skewer running through the heat of my arm, guiding me back past the warmth. It gave me the ability to shift away from her—back only by inches. She scraped the bottle named after blood with the fingernails of her right hand—a soft sound of smoothed glass, and the candle was clutched in her left.

"—And yet sometimes I've changed my mind on what's most interesting." She drew it out. She was a spider trying to pin down a fly, to watch which of its motions were the most entertaining when it struggled in the webbing.

A shelf dug into my back. I'd drawn my knees to my chin and she no longer reached for me. "What did your last boyfriend die of?"

"Girlfriend." Bodhi settled back on her heels, half-kneeling and again ready to spring. "She was one of our kind and died a decade ago on a hunt for the Teeth of the North. Stupid bitch went ahead to impress me and it ate her head. I killed the prey in her name, wiped out its whole clan, and wrapped my sword with a piece of its hide."

She'd used the name before—Teeth of the North. Like polar bears but larger and with a blue tint to their fur and temperatures close to absolute zero—frozen enough for a weapon even against the cold ones. Animals to her mindreading and animals who stayed away from humankind. Of no help.

"Nobody since her. Humans these days ask too many fucking questions. Easier to be witch or demon or goddess and take what you want."

I was tired enough to say outright. "I don't approve of rape."

Something unknowable flashed past her face like the wingbeat of a crow. "It was a long time ago and the rules are different for immortals. Everything gets boring in time. You want to try everything at least once if you live forever."

_No. I don't believe in rules and yet if they exist then they are to be the same._ At least Helen thought that—it didn't matter.

"There was a last time I was with a human and where we talked and didn't just fuck," Bodhi offered. "But he was older than you, boy."

"How much?" Better to let her talk and fling it back at her.

"Like seventy years older." She wanted that to seem shocking—and so voiced it nonchalantly. She herself was much older than that. "I liked his mind. He was that ballsy that every word he thought was only an echo of everything he said. He'd been everywhere, done everything—or at least as much as a human can in his time. Fought in wars on both sides of the same fight, won fortunes in gambling and lost them the same night, joined outlaws and shot them all down for the bounty, sailed all the way across the world, fucked a girl in every port and a boy or two, hunted big game and joined the slave trade. But he didn't make it through the turning.

"He was also enough of a bastard to cheat on me with this other girl who looked seventeen and really was seventeen," she said. "What about you, boy? Rather winkle to squid? Or nothing at all? Once a eunuch who knew the court survived a turning of mine and didn't get to grow anything back..." she taunted. To that physical information be contrasted what had looked like Monty Black's fingers sprouting on his hand again—the jeer didn't matter.

_None of your business._ "Saving myself for marriage. I'm Catholic, if a bad one. My mother was. Is."

Bodhi raised her head and laughed loudly—and while she was like that she would not try to attack. "That's crap! You don't believe in that religious crap...do you? Bunch of peasant goatfuckers making up fairy stories. That guy was an ugly bastard-born carpenter who got himself messily killed that they only say came back to life—when I'd lived thousands of years at the time—"

_If you're about to say you took the opportunity to throw a few stones on the Via Dolorosa..._

"You were around before people grew up enough to understand it, that's all. There isn't anyone with any kind of supernatural powers who can raise the dead, is there? You can't change people who are already dead."

It's a story humans tell about a human. A carpenter with skin soft enough to feel splinters. A man born of woman who lived in blood and bone and filth and dirt. A human who died slowly and painfully and messily. I had not darkened the doors of a church lately, but I knew the prayers Antony played.

"Jon and me weren't even there. The steppes of the Xiongnu eastwards, maybe, or southwards into India. The thing in Palestine didn't make a difference at all until we got back to Rome a couple hundred years later and found the empire changed. For the worse.

"A vampire I met once said something happened with a lone human in a wilderness that way and another of us...but if that happened, then who could tell the story? A cross is two lines drawn in goat shit and a crucifix a style of executing that no vampire thought of first—and you can't turn anyone without a heartbeat, duh."

"And this wine no part of the Eucharist." Thick and red and too muddy to be the copper-iron of blood.

"Like you wouldn't walk in a church door and burst into flames," Bodhi said. And she told other stories while I let the wine spill out words.

In the Great War she was a nurse and her brother a doctor, and they left off the diet when all the world was full of blood and death. Rainbows of gases in all colors imaginable, red and green and cobalt blue and yellow, pillars of death rising over the mud of the trenches. Even deadly to her kind and it made her feel alive.

"—No, we weren't involved in the second one, dumbass—we're _Americans_, Jon likes picking the winning side—"

And Bodhi and her brother were in India in its old glory days, all wet heat and gold and hunting animals through the forests in Terai—and things that were not animals. The Kumbhakarna was the name of a giant of that country. Air thick enough with wet heat to trap the steel of a human-made sword. Warmth that a vampire found pleasant to seek. Villagers who drowned them in jewels to placate monsters. Inscriptions and wise sages who guided Jon to lore he wished to find. Kali was not Bodhi's legend with her garland of skulls and many arms, but it was one of which she approved. Lines of ancient Sanskrit flashed from her mouth.

The only words I had in turn were human sensations described as a reminder of the outside. Soft candyfloss dissolving on your tongue into a clutch of sweet sugar latticework. Red furnace breath tingling like soft springing needles in fingers and toes to go from cold to heat, brown-blue numbness that you forget you have until you know once again what warmth is like. Delicate flesh of spring fruit plump with strawberry juice, a full blister made by the sun. Cutting edges of smooth black stone on a shore, more attractive by the way it could turn back on your hands. The vampires had potent senses but all devoted to one thing only, and that cost them much.

"Addiction. You have little that I want." I said it with wine spinning in my head, blurring things into strange colors in the heart of the candlelight resting on one of the shelves. The taper had burned to a wax-dripping stump. One moment of escape and warmth was no habit of it. I drained the dregs.

"Always a fire in the back of your throat," Bodhi said. "Once I climbed Mauna Loa and watched the lava seething below. It's like that never-dying inferno. Animal blood quells it about as little as water. But ignoring it means you're stronger in your head."

Serum burning in Helen's throat too all the while she pretended to be calm and sit by me. Bodhi choosing to let the flames rise in her mouth as she was near.

"I've seen what it feels like. Addiction to something that lets the world rest for a while. For a while my mother had issues of that sort, but she overcame it. She'd been free for years. It was brave and strong of her. She protected me." That was maudlin, especially for Bodhi there and close. "That trait is nothing anyone would choose."

She protected me. She took me away.

Bodhi leaned in and made her demands. "Bet you wish you had power to stop me. I could break in after your mom. I could do something to Jen or Craterface...again. That bother you?"

_Yes._

I leaned back against the wall, watching the ceiling spin quickly above us. The candle was nearly dead. "There is nothing I can do to stop you. So I'm not going to try. That bother you?" I continued. "Is apathy—feigned or unfeigned, impossible to tell—the right weapon against you?"

I doubted it was what she wanted.

She didn't take that one. "You're getting real boring. One-and-a-half bottles should make you see purple elephants—even if you're not talking any more crap than normal. Come and I'll put you back to bed, boy." Bodhi forced me to my feet, a cold hand on my wrist. The candle blew out. I leaned on her, walking out—the door closed with a simple click.

_Good. No longer trapped with you. That's an important step._

I reeled. It was very easy to be dizzy and almost impossible to put feet in a straight line—and easy to be about to be very sick.

It was probably the first time I had seen actual distress on Bodhi's face. "Fuck," she complained desperately. "I am not cleaning up puke. Hurry up. I knew you weren't any fucking good at this."

_It does hurt. The world's still spinning and I have a headache._ Not exactly glamorous to empty everything from inside. It was odd that it left you both hollow and with no hunger for anything at all. _Clean it up._ Cold water helped keep awake.

Helen was interfering. She should not. She discovered and disapproved greatly. She kept tapping on the door asking if she should come in. Sent Bodhi away—probably not to her bedroom without dinner.

"It was very unwise, Xavier." She appeared at the open door, hair still loose down her back, a brown suit and skirt to her knees, almost the same as below the tree by Bodhi's window. I faced her and wondered what she would conclude. Easier to speak than to think properly—all soft-angled colors in the air and in my head. I could smell soap strongly enough. "Follow me." A stone-set face, it always was; but this time not easy to read intended mercy in it. Perhaps her village was harsh on drunkards.

Not back to the room but upward to where there were windows to a black sky and bleary stars. With her back turned all the while—though swift she would turn at a flight from her—she unlocked a door to the white porch and a frozen dark wind. A first fruit of winter.

If words swam like water then to burst the bonds of the winter and speak with the sound of a sea—and then bring fire and all burning. The cold was wakeful and restless and tossing an early storm with frost.

"Fresh air. A chance. Sit. Take this." Stone governed her. I held the glass tumbler and sat at the opposite end of the white railings. Midnight blue clouds moved above. "Inebriation is not a solution to despair," Helen said sternly.

"How inebriated?" A line—a line to convince her. "Coherent enough to—to aptly quote." Too many words to choose from. Some that were more beautiful than others, and about a priest of God for her sake. "A blood-offering subdued by the hands of the servants of God. Fed of his priests with faith, with milk of his word and wine. Very good wine, I'm told. Barely tasting of dust and ashes at all." Graves. The tale of it was graves below the sea.

"Drink." The wind barely tossed her long hair, as if it was made from weighted wire. She came here from her husband. Mental associations were overlaid by glamor—for there was little about her in truth akin to my mother. Long hair of the wrong shade and an opaque, quelled voice that led to nothing, and sometimes a marble-cold comfort in this place.

Helen was fleeter than the wind and iron-sinewed when she chose to be. It was probably a human recipe—nobody but humans could think of something like this, although someone with no sense of taste couldn't try. Raw egg beaten together. Bits of bacon. Cayenne and ketchup-flavored. Smooth and sticky and as pleasant as the headache to try and get down and keep down.

"We have not let you out of late. Perhaps that is the cause of this. Humans are a part of the natural world. Stay and watch." The moon was a sliver of crescent below a thick waving bough. The bitter wind was wet with frost. There was only a faint light from inside the house; no orange streetlights or flashing traffic flowing and receding.

There was only the sound of the rustling wind—and below it the creaks and running of the rabbits. Distantly, something that piped. Large animals were sensible enough to fear this place and barely a bird would fly near. Most of the world would rest.

I shivered, drawing arms and hands close to my chest. There was an illusion of safety in black, soft branches ahead, clumped together like sheltering caves. Helen watched like a guarding statue.

"Don't despair," she said, grey and careful. "We have vanished into other names and places before in the human world. This will pass."

Because words were all I had I spoke with her, cold air blowing below my eyes. Her plants and her books and the idea of transcendent souls. I'd prove I was myself; I would keep eyes open and speak; I would not allow an easy fall backward, cold as if barefoot walking through black-streaked snow.

"Eleutheromania," I defined, though not to Helen, "is a word for the wild, mad desire for freedom."

A bird beat its wings against the bars of the cage, and again there was the alien sky. She was lost. White fog bloomed where she went, whether her own will or no. The thin, ashen voice answered.

"Above all," Helen lectured carefully, "a mother should want her children to grow up."

Across the salt water and by a sea of shells. In a very old place. A lost soul flying against the bars of her cage amidst the smell of blood that drenched my skin. I dreamed of her.

I woke in the room, fully dressed on the bed. Helen had done nothing but put me here. And in the pockets of clothes Alora had chosen I did not have nothing.

Bodhi's crystalline lighter whirled between my fingers, and when I pressed it down a small flame lit promptly in response.

—

A/N: Swinburne is again involved in quotation. :) Iron-sinewed and fleet as the wind come from AL Gordon.


	40. Flee At Once

_It has to be while there is still time. Monty._

Boiling water fogged the shower glass. I was cold enough to have gained a blue tint below my skin. Ice-cold water dripped from my hair into my collar. I trusted they would notice heat and obvious sound.

Something as cold as they pried open the door, saw none of them near, and ran.

This was closer. The door was built by humans who saw the need for a lock, but Bodhi had no chance at all to lock it. I went into Jon Cullen's wines and spilt expensive tequila on the wooden shelf.

Water is not flammable. Alcohol is. The trick is whether the content is enough to be considered a man's drink. And if enough heat catches then everything becomes flammable. The spilt liquid was a trail on wood back to a quick careful arrangement of other bottles—and then I slammed the door behind me. I only had to be behind the next corner before it went off enough for Helen or another to notice. And if I was still luckier it would seem like an accident of spontaneous combustion or carelessness from Bodhi the previous night.

Vampires hardly needed human notions of security. And there were better locks to protect from without than within. For instance, they kept the garage key hung on a shelf near to the door.

_There is very little time._ The large sheet-covered car must be Jon's, a smaller Alora's, and Bodhi's clearly recognizable. And she kept all the tools of her hobby by her. Even up to two cans of oil. She'd certainly have any amount of gasoline inside the car at that—and drips from that were collected below her tailpipe. I checked the main garage door could open. Then I took a length of tape and dipped it for a string; led it back to everything flammable—rags, varnish, an old can of paint thinner, a bag of fertilizer—and lit the fuse.

_It will all burn. You need to run in the open after the fire covers you but before you burn too._

I ran and did not allow myself to look back. The oil-coated tape crackled. I felt my hands on a metal handle ready to lift. Then a whoosh—a white flare brighter than anything I could imagine and a wave of black burning heat—

_Count on making yourself the first bonfire, boy._

The door was open and I was running, burned, away into the trees and as far and fast as I could for something human. I did not look back.

Everything poured into _run, run, as fast as you can_. Any half-second of a start. If they caught you it would be quicker than the time taken to look back. The quick and the dead—the living. There was some light above, golden and blue and cloud-covered. Boughs and branches sloughed past me and one sharp bramble hurt, but not worse than straining lungs or overheated skin. Smoke stayed in my nose and mouth. I ran as long as I could and knew I could run longer. Flight.

Then I crashed into something that did not let me through.

It was soft enough and warm enough to not be one of them. It wore cloth. It gripped my upper arms with both hands and wouldn't let me escape. It called me by name.

Broad. Tall, taller than me. A shaved head. Blue eyes. A purple checkered shirt and birdwatching glasses and notebook slung across his chest. Misha from school. Not the first time he'd grabbed me. Erin's friend. The big guy from the football team. A birdwatcher.

"You're alive!" he burst out with, and I could have told him that any time before. "I'm glad! We'll all be glad!"

"Have to run. They'll get us. Can't stay here. They—" He wouldn't let me go though I pushed him as hard as I could. For a human he was hardly soft.

"There is a fire and we need to go." Misha lingered. The blaze must have grown large enough for him to see. I hoped it grew big enough for all of them—that it all caught and burned, Bodhi's car and Helen's garden and the fluid inside them that turned to ash. He was one human. "There is a lady not far from here. She's from the government and she'll help you. A lot of people have been worried."

I thrust away from him. "Then run."

He was able to hurry me along—we heard the flames spitting behind, smelt smoke, and when the smoke felt heavy in the air I wondered if I'd done too good a job and had only killed myself in a forest fire. He led me back to a clearing in the woods, and again there were humans there.

Imogen Winthrop with her own set of binoculars around her neck above a plain brown coat, caught in a thin shaft of light between the trees, looking no different to the last time I saw her across a lunch table, freckles spread across the bridge of her nose. Erin waiting, fair hair loose over her shoulders and back, a pale hand raised to her chin in shock. A dark-haired woman was between them.

She wore black sunglasses even though it was late afternoon. A dark blue professional's suit. Her features Middle Eastern; her skin very smooth and brushed like careful glue over narrow, rounded cheeks and an aquiline nose. She looked in her late twenties or so. Small perfect ringlets escaped from the bun of her hair. The woman started forward. There wasn't much time.

I fell on Erin. She allowed my arms around her back and awkwardly touched me. Her skin was soft and loose over her slender arms and very human, her face flushed and pink, the smell of grass and leaves in her hair. The hysterical words came easily.

"Erin. God. Erin. You at last. All this time. It's been so long. You were waiting out here in the woods. Bird eyes. I thought I'd never see you again. Never able to tell you..." Then more in that vein I did not have to think about at all to say.

And beneath the curtain of her hair I traced letters on Erin's back. I saw her look up at me, raising her eyes to mine and her forehead gently resting against my own. At first she tried to say broken comforts of her own in a quiet voice, and then stopped. She gave a slight nod of understanding, summer-blue eyes wide and frightened. I let her go.

_RUN. WHEN CAN_.

"My god. You escaped the Cullen house by _setting it on fire_?" Imogen was aiming binoculars in the blaze's direction—a crimson-yellow conflagaration that must be high enough to be consuming the upper gables now. Fire must devour even faster than they. "They're going to—they've got to call the fire department. There's all this rushing about there— And then there's that you're safe now—which is great! And this is Meera from the FBI—she's been looking for you—"

The woman spoke; the accent easy and close to north-east America. "The name's Clay. Meera Clay." I saw a flash of official-looking identification. "Shall we go? We cannot stay here." She spoke a few quick sentences after dialling a cell phone, sounding official enough.

"Lead on, Agent M—" Imogen said; then released another _oh my god_; there were quick inquiries and moving on, moving toward a human road. Smoke made Misha begin to cough and stung my eyes, even here, and the seething crackles and spitting rung in the air.

Bodhi's garage and Helen's garden. They'd kill me, but it would be quickly.

Erin stayed by my side a few moments longer, then moved to Misha to warn him. Imogen came up by me.

"—been looking for you, X—" She directed her excited disjoint phrases at me. "You used to work for the Cullens, when you were on the streets—but you mightn't have known that, through someone else who worked for them, a middleman. Jon's job at the hospital fits right in with illegal substances— And because they figured you know more than you did, they kidnapped you and Meera came to work it out, and it was birdwatching that got us here— That tell you everything you need to know about the creepy Cullen criminal clan? I'm psyched that you look okay, kind of singed though, sorry—"

_Rumors of my criminal past may have been greatly exaggerated._

Quick as a squirrel jumping back and forth Imogen switched to something else, looking back where the plume of smoke rose in the air above crackling fires. "Meera, the fire looks bad—Alora's only little and the others are in high school too, and nobody deserves that—are they going to be okay?"

_With any luck they won't be._

"It's a job for the fire department. They'll handle it." The woman who called herself Clay harried the four of us on, as if it was her job to protect teenagers.

She couldn't know I knew. The skin too smooth and eyes covered at the wrong hour. The poise in her stance as if she could turn easily into a beast. It was impossible that Meera Clay was in any sense human.

The road was still packed dirt here, but it was a way to other human roads. Asphalt, street lights, large groups of people. We followed it for a while beyond the woods, and then there was a large dark grey car parked by the side of the road, empty and clean inside.

Erin believed me—she had to believe me. She was by Imogen's side now, her hands flying white over each other like the wings of a bird, signalling her friend.

"Get in. Let other people do their jobs," Meera invited. The doors unlocked at the touch of a button. I let it draw close.

_If they take you in their car, then they can easily kill you._

"Run! Get away from her!" I yelled. They listened. "She's not real—" There were four—maybe she could not grab all of us. I turned to sprint down the road, Imogen about to dart off into the trees with Misha.

Meera Clay's head whipped toward me, her eyes invisible below the sunglasses. She didn't raise so much as a hand. But her face was the last thing I saw.

I was blind. My feet slipped on the road, and I felt the pain of scrapes on hands and knees. I heard Erin cry out, and then heard nothing else in the blackness—no voice or wind or distant fire or even the echoes of silence. I crawled forward and felt nothing to crawl to.

_Killigan and Bodhi couldn't. She can. She definitely can. She will kill._

I couldn't feel my own neck to know when blood would burst from it. It was a void. If I opened my mouth, then I could not feel it or hear what came from it. The smoke stench was no longer there and I could not tell if I breathed at all.

Sight. Hearing. Touch. Taste. Smell—

The other senses people don't think about. Proprioception. Kinesthesia. Vestibular. Chronometry.

I saw nothing, not even darkness. I had no body. An eternity could pass without knowing it. The others might be the same—but they could not be seen or reached or touched. Time stretched on in the void. She could allow this to seem like forever before she finally killed us.

A teeming madness came from knowing no linchpin to reality. No walls to scratch open, no touch of my own hands, no location in black space infinite in every direction. No meaning. Words teemed—words could only teem—and none of them staved away losing the mind. Reel off lists or start counting to an eternity and it would fill in a bare fraction of the time remaining here. It was pointless to do anything but let the howling nothing fill everything I was.

Perhaps she had killed us and this was a hell.

I'd give anything to be only blind in the metal room, but that was no longer real. The memories meant nothing: nothing was real. No point of reference. The memories were delusion and this was reality. Nothing existed. Nothing ever had existed. No hell could be worse than annihiliation.

Scream your name a million times and there would be no sound at all.

The void was alone.

_I have a mind. I am nothing but a disembodied mind._

If reality disappeared then at least give unreality a chance before irrevocable madness entered the void. Dreams. Colors impossible in the waking world filled my view.

Shimmering audularescent. Pale grisan. Striped minaver. Intense shireen. They surrounded me like the cardinals of a map. Words I crafted, and dreams I summoned like old friends.

And with knowing them in the abyss I could change them. Impossible colors can be reflected into true. I saw a square of color, then a cube. Then a rushing wind of adding yet another dimension. Red flooded me, then gold and green and knowledge and place and breathing. Everything came rushing back in a flood.

There was still darkness, but it was a real darkness in that shade of dark brown that means there is light somewhere. There was a heavy smell.

I woke in a grave.

—


	41. Ashes

Bodies. Dead bodies. There was no way out. I gasped for breath. A corpse lay over my face, another below. Dead slack shapes wretchedly warm and suffocating. There was no way out of this black coffin. They buried me alive with dead men touching me. I clawed and kicked and hit hard walls and ceiling above. It did not open. I screamed and there was nobody to hear. The jagged rents of it pierced my head.

After screaming it out and scraping at the metal coffin there was only trying to breathe in the tiny space. I'd kicked still-warm flesh of the dead bodies. _Still-warm. You're wrong. They're the same._ I reached down again and grasped a wrist—too small to be Misha's and probably Imogen's. There was a steady pulse. I could hear them breathe if I listened. They felt no pain nor anything else.

It was impossible to tell what time had passed, but we were in the trunk of a car. Most probably Meera's—not Meera, Meskah's—grey car. There was some air left. I breathed more slowly. All three bodies were here: Misha's bulk, the shape of Erin's face, and Imogen's wrist. All three breathed softly and steadily.

_She is Meskah of the blood-eyed Moirai and she has the power to deprive people of their senses. Her twin brother Ismail is the torturer._

I reached around in the inside of the car, pushing the bodies out of the way while they slept until I found the lever to release the trunk. It was slow work and the sticky sweat from flesh a miserable heat—and they would not stop touching me. I feared this. At last there was a freedom when I kicked it in.

I fell onto shrub-spotted sand in the golden light of afternoon drawing to an end in orange-tinted clouds beautiful to see. There was no one in sight. I heard the sound of waves and saw the sea close, the rock of Akalat on the horizon. A place I knew from Monty's father's fishing, very close to the beach. There was not one conscious breath from anyone human—but someone human would have come for the noise already. Someone not human would have killed.

Cars meant vampires could not track with their senses and we were free from Bodhi and Jon for at least a little while. I reached back into the trunk and shook Imogen's shoulders. She did not wake. They did not seem to be able to reach and find themselves out of it, no matter how far Meskah had gone from them.

_You know very well where Meskah has gone._

I wasn't even going to try to lift Misha. I dragged Imogen out by her shoulders, and bit by bit hauled her down over the sands to the water by the boating docks. She did not wake, though her feet left a snake's trail behind her and sand flew in her hair. Her body still breathed normally by its instincts. The waves rolled shallowly at the edge of the beach.

I threw her in. _I am not trying to drown her._ I counted while her face was under water, grasping her ready to pull her out: one, two, three. If this particular shock didn't work she wouldn't die from it—

Imogen rose like a vengeful mermaid, coughing and spluttering in rage.

"—Drowned me—_you_—" She brought up her arms and hit my chest with both fists, and I went down into the saltwater too. A beat later she stopped.

"It was all dark." She took a hand off my ribcage. "There was nothing at all. And she did it. You woke me up—" Both her hands suddenly gripped my shoulders like burning iron. "Erin and Misha! Are they the same? Get them out! We've got to do it now! They'll go mad in there!"

"You've learned Meera has powers. Her real name is probably Meskah—no, that doesn't matter," I explained. "Short story: Meera has powers, Bodhi and her family have powers, Monty Black and his friends have powers too—and I need to stop him doing something terrible tonight. Help me with that."

Imogen blazed and did not listen. "Erin and Misha first. I know what it's like. One second lasts forever there. They come out of this sane or else—"

We took Erin down between us and dunked her in the sea. She was quieter than Imogen to wake up, clinging to her friend and staring wide-eyed at the world to reassure herself it existed again, softly trembling. But she told us to simply use the water in Imogen's coat, and placed her hands over Misha's mouth and nose. Dripping and stopping him breathing simulated drowning close enough. That brought him back to the land of the living, shouting like an angry bulldog until Erin slipped under his right arm and stayed by him.

I spoke. "Monty's a rival to Bodhi—the pranks on her were him. It's about powers. He's going to bring back someone called Perdita. She's ash and fog, and she slices into people from the air, and she's lost and wandering. She'd foam around someone and grind them to nothing. I think that was the core of the story of Rhoda Jansen—or whoever her victims really were." Perhaps I should almost be grateful to Meskah that they half-believed me. "I have to go to him, before. I can convince him he owes me one. Or several.

"Or his father Sam. He'll know what to do."

The lighthouse would soon switch on a golden beam across the ocean, from the highest point on the rock that blocked the open sea. Akalat, Top of the Rock. Inhabited by humans who left traces of their presence well before Jon and Bodhi claimed they were born, where their great heroes were laid to rest. The oldest place—and so the place for legends and horrors. Monty and monsters waited there. In a sense Meskah had only brought me closer to that goal, but the sea was wide between here and it.

"Check out the boats," Imogen said, and just like that there was a plan.

"Misha, you and Erin run to the houses. Keep away from any weird noises. Tell Sam Black—tell everyone." The car ignition was secured by an extra lock, and with turnings and rough ground the way might just be faster in a shortcut on foot. Other forms of communication Meskah had seen fit to destroy—a cell phone smashed and squeezed until its wires spilled out of it. "Look after Erin," she told him. "I'll look after X."

"—You know, Meera's make-you-go-to-nightmare-sleep powers made us believe in sci-fi or supernatural straight away—but you've been locked up in the Cullen house and you never said how you know what's going down on Akalat." Imogen unknotted a tarpaulin covering a motorboat docked in the water. "You a mutant too? Changeling? Witch? Put this on."

She opened a locker in the side of it and flung me one of a pair of lifejackets.

"I'm as human as you. I can think my way out of some of their powers. That's all. But Perdita cut into me and showed me her face in my blood, and I saw—" In dreams, but that made it sound worse. "She's communicating," I defined weakly. "They're bringing her here for the purpose of killing the Cullens, but they're unleashing something much more monstrous."

Imogen bent over the boat's ignition, gloating over the fuel. She used a penknife from her pockets to pry the cover free and then efficiently wove wires and sparkplugs together.

"...I'm impressed you know how to do that as well as break into houses. It's like a superpower."

"I like to know how to do a little of everything." The engine thrummed into life. Imogen smirked, then reached back for the knotted rope that secured the boat to the docks. "You know how to pilot this thing? No? Fuel tank, motor, moorings, steering, throttle."

"Got it."

"Keep a lookout for obstacles."

The boat was freed—and then began to cut across the sea to the Akalat lighthouse.

"They all have powers? They all have the same power? You really think Meskah's waiting for us there?" Imogen kept her eyes on the sea. The tides flowed but out from land it did not seem in the grip of harsh chopping currents. Soaplike white foam flowed back from the boat's dark green wake.

Of course she understood that Meskah was out there because of where the car was discarded, and asked because she was frightened. I didn't tell that to her. "They have different powers." I listed what I'd seen myself. "Meskah has a twin brother who tortures people with pain. And they say there are double-jointed contortionists and some with electric power and some more who can brainwash people."

"Oh. It's brave of you," she said. Words burst from her again like a jug filled with water cracked by a blow. "You've been kidnapped and—and horribly tortured for all I know. And straight away you're riding out to rescue Monty from something." She looked at me again, briefly, and her voice rose and fell between high and husked. But she kept her hands and the boat steady toward their goal. "Erin's— You've seen me completely freak out before, X-guy, and even though I'm the one who wants adventures I'm not good at living with them. Erin's the one who gets out her first-aid courses in a crisis. I'm just the one who knows how to mess around in boats."

"That's not the reason I'm doing this. I'd let Monty dig his own grave if I wasn't sure the ash would kill me." I knew how monstrous that would sound to her but could not make it sound any less cold or true. "I have to ask you things too, Imogen. Has anything happened to my mother that you know about?"

This more than any other I needed to know. Waiting for that second was a cold torment.

"No." She shifted the drive selection. Recounting facts seemed to even out her voice. "Lean right—throw your weight to balance this thing out. Your father's been worried, you have to know that. He found your blood in the woods. It's not good to think your kid's been murdered, especially a second time."

It was okay: she was still there.

"I'll see Gordon soon enough." The boat moved at her guidance; I felt the darkening water slip below. "Jenessa?"

"Helping us," Imogen said, "Jen's been our computer support all along."

"That's..." It was unfamiliar to feel a grin stretch untainted from ear to ear. For that moment I found it impossible to contain a shining flash of elation. There was one thing in all of this that was brilliantly certain. "That's amazing."

Then there was a black rock underwater to her right and I called a warning for Imogen to steer away.

Akalat came closer, a darkened pair of mountains against the gold-tinged sky, like three teeth in a damaged mouth—a tall incisor tooth, an open gap, and two smaller peaks of ragged molars. We both watched it arrive. "Everything's got to have a weakness, doesn't it?" Imogen said. "What are theirs?"

"Eyes and insides are flammable," I said out of instinct, "—but there's no way for either of us to fight them. Meskah and those like her look human but they're made of stone. Maybe something more like titanium. They're fast, faster than your eyes can track. Superhumanly strong. And incredibly durable. You can't stake them."

She caught that last part, and after I'd not mentioned certain words before.

"Hold on. Stakes? As in..."

I hurried it along. "They live off blood and kill people and they're very old. There's a word for that, isn't there? Oh, and Monty...the Quileute people have a story about being made from wolves. Guess what he turns into?"

She steered carefully, shifting her head to look up and down at Akalat's dock and the sea. The lighthouse beam switched on in a sudden shock, a cold yellow path that widely lit its way before being swallowed by distant water. "...Don't tell me. Look, I like the Moonsprite books even though people keep going on about how werewolves shouldn't be glamorous shimmering silver werewraiths—the lead girl detective character is cool—and they're not real. I've even heard Chase going off on them—he was the first of the reservation boys who shifted schools to play sports—"

I could understand Imogen's disjoint phrases because I did the same thing: when too many ideas spilled out it was not possible to make them one. She grasped it quickly, and managed to extract herself from the tangents.

"Okay. They have powers, they hurt people, and Monty's and Chase's powers involve shapeshifting—and whether or not you like it, they like your power immunity. And you know something about the one you call Perdita," she said. "Solution to my Hallowe'en mystery story and probably a lot of others around the country."

She quickly outlined the story of how Meskah came into it: that the vampire searched for information in the town, that Imogen's own insatiable questions to the stranger had led to her being unable to shake the humans off, that Imogen and the others had believed in organized crime and secret agents from the government rather than the truth.

We were very near to Akalat now. "Perdita," Imogen asked, "do you know that means lost? It was in the school play last year. Did you name her? It's just that you say that—she's a lost soul who kills people."

Her alien sky intruded where I slept. She merged into me once and I dreamed of her memories of the place where she was born. Perdita knew foreign constellations centuries and hemispheres away, and knew only those when she no longer had eyes. Perdita was lost and barely knew what she did, except that Carl and Adelaide wanted the same vengeance against the same creatures, and so they became a trio of friends. She was still a monster like the rest of them.

Her thin ashen voice in the air hissed from blood.

I don't always see things that are real. I gave Perdita a name and a reason.

"Probably. Yes. They can't die and she is dust." Imogen gave a small, sharp shudder to that.

She slowed the throttle. "Throw your weight back a bit and get a handle on the mooring ropes—there's the dock. There's only one place to go. The rock's not _that_ big. Last time I was here it was school... And hold there." I flung over one rope, she the other, and she settled the engine.

"We should take different paths," I told her. "They have much better senses than we do and it raises the odds."

Imogen raised an auburn eyebrow. "What kind of terrible horror movies don't you watch? You'd have to be the damsel in distress of this not-so-daring duo. There's one way up from here anyway." She burned brightly: she was all vivid fire within and without, sharp with it to boot. She jumped lithely to the dock and beckoned me to follow, challenging the very world to put her down. "Don't forget we have backup. What could possibly go wrong?"

The path to the old lookout was steep and up a long, rusting iron stairway embedded above the rock. Imogen had a pen-size flashlight tucked in a pocket, but it was not dark enough to use and risk attention; and enough light spread from the lighthouse beam to vaguely reach us. I saw a flash of a distant ship, floating left and right as if some current had begun to turn against its favor.

_Monty. Don't do it_, I asked in my head.

At first I'd run and she'd kept up, but then it became too easy to bark shins against the high-raised rusted stairs. We followed the spiral upward as quickly as we could—scrabbling up the rock instead no easy climb. One way. Our footsteps rung on the metal and I tried to convince myself that the echoes we heard were only ordinary and real.

_Monty._

When it came, it did so silently and pulled me off my feet. A trenchcoat. Red eyes set in a shadowed face, and even in what little light remained they were a fresh arterial scarlet rather than wine-dark crimson. It twisted one of my arms high on my back and the other low. Imogen began to echo my scream—and stopped herself. Then she lunged forward with two fingers stretched the right distance apart to aim for the eyes, and failed hopelessly.

His backhand was alarmingly gentle, as if shooing a fly rather than killing it. Imogen fell flat on her back on the rocks with a cry. An instant later and both his hands grasped me again. My arms burned in their sockets.

_Monty, now would be a great time._

Then he ran with me, and I saw nothing of Imogen any more. The stairs were cleared in a bare few seconds, my feet dangling awkwardly above the ground as the vampire leaped. I struggled against the pain of it, but this stone was not at all gentle.

There was an old lookout point with a wood-framed house, the older, a black square staring out over sharp rock down to the sea, watching for invaders. The vampire threw me down so harshly I felt bones were broken, and I looked up at lit oil lamps to see Monty and his friends. Nat startled to stand; Fane Clearwater glowering in a corner; Chase leaning against the wall; Leb and Israel cross-legged around a wide fire burning red and golden in a pit; Monty himself foremost with them. I began to peel myself from the ground.

"I came to stop you. Don't do that to her." Nothing shattered, only bruised. I raised myself but did not stand.

"Do what, Swan?" he said.

Israel glared at the cold intruder with a twist of his lip that showed a flash of teeth and Fane seemed to bristle, but they did not try to kill him.

"I don't know what, but it'll kill everyone if you do it." That did not sound convincing.

"How did you get here?" Monty stood above me. He wore a dark cloak around his shoulders, carefully sewn with bright circles and thick geometrical lines at the edges that suggested a wolf's head, over black shorts and a muscled bare chest. He'd always had curly hair and a trace of a child's plumpness around his cheeks, and that was still in his face if you purposefully looked for it. He'd be far warmer than the vampires to a touch. All of them wore the same uniform of the cloak, as one band of protectors, their hair coiled up and slicked behind their heads. It had the same effect as a company of soldiers. You could never think of them as only young teenagers like this. "The plan would have let you home free."

"I am home free. Almost." It was becoming rapidly unlikely. "Thanks to improvisational arson and birdwatchers. Imogen Winthrop's here, and there are others who know we both are. Rescue her."

She rescued me. If there was only Meskah in the woods or no human I would be dead or worse. She tried to fight something that could not be fought.

Israel detached himself from the fire and changed. The familiar rush of heat from it was almost unbearable combined with the burning fire. I saw the giant wolf pacing in front of the vampire—holding him back from springing. From the direction of his red glare it would have been over me. The cloak billowed loosely over the back of the fur.

"You're a complete idiot. Chase, Leb, I say to fetch Im," Monty ordered. "Don't engage the enemy yet."

But then a piercing scream echoed somewhere below. They were late and far too late, and I would not think of it while the wolves galloped outside to see what could be left. Moments ago—it was moments ago and Imogen should still be breathing and vital like a flame, the one who brought me here.

I knew what an open throat looked like on a woman, perhaps not so different from a dead deer, soft and broken and gone.

"You're allied with a bloodsucker?" I accused. The male vampire was a killer—it shone in his eyes. He'd hit Imogen down and hurt me. The scream was his fault. "He's Ismail of the Moirai, isn't he?" There weren't many names I knew—although above the high collar of his coat he was darker and more heavy-browed than the twin Meskah. "A torturer. Eats people."

"Not," Monty said defensively. "It's a temporary covenant, since we want the same thing as Carl here." The coals of the firepit danced red behind him—bit white behind my eyes. Pain filled inside and outside. "Kill the Cullens."

Then for the first time I heard the feral male vampire's voice. A high, rich tenor and a north-European accent that sounded as careful as an actor's tones. "You stood by while my hand was ripped from me and watched them burn it." His lips were drawn back from his teeth and beyond the giant wolf he crouched like an animal. He looked into my eyes.

But he, like Monty, had both hands in about as intact a condition as it was possible to have hands. It made no sense. Burn vampire parts and they were not supposed to come back; werewolves lived and regrew.

Monty and I both stopped in shock at a second, longer scream from below. The giant wolf howled something out—and his friends stopped to listen to it as if they understood.

"Immy's still alive. No thanks to you," Monty said fiercely. I took in a deep, painful breath.

"What you're doing won't thank you for it any more," I said desperately. "Taking Perdita. Her soul's already lost." Their faces remained blank at the name.

Imogen was alive but that said little. I imagined it was Meskah to find her again. You would not expect mercy from a blood-drinker.

"You mean the ash one?" Nathaniel asked, speaking for the first time here. His cloak fell a little too large around him. "Im's story isn't the only legend about something like _her_. In eighteen-seventy-four, Daniel Pierce in Massachusetts stepped out of his farmhous to visit a neighbour, leaving footprints in the snow that abruptly stopped. Family members said that they heard screams coming from the air above. In nineteen-twelve, Freda Lang vanished in Oklahoma in mid-step crossing a field in front of a parson and his two children. We worked out what she was, and that she's unstoppable enough to defeat them."

Monty gave a smooth nod to that. "Nat did the research. You gave me the idea, Swan."

That was an impressive burst of horror. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Energy. Mass. You carried on about it." Firelight glinted in Monty's dark, wide eyes. "The transformation changes mass and releases energy, all we needed. We're power stations. We had enough to bring her back in a ritual."

All this to kill Bodhi: because she ripped him apart in the woods and gloated over it. Perhaps she had done the gloating to distract herself from killing, but she said that she wanted to kill Monty when she thought he was good enough to fight.

It wasn't something I disagreed with on general principles, I told myself. I wanted to see them all burn.

"And we've already done it."

_No. Oh, God._

The faces stared at me: Monty proud, Nat indifferent, Fane warlike, the wolf snarling. The vampire barely held at bay.

_It will be much worse than he thinks._

Fane said something, scornful and fervent. I'd known and seen.

Chase and Leb's shapes returned, carrying Imogen on the back of the darker wolf. She looked pale but there was no blood, and her eyes were open when they let her down. She staggered to stand up.

The pair of gold-eyed wolves changed back. She watched. "It's real," she whispered. "It hurts." And she came next to me. "You're human. You say you are. It hurt so much."

"Two blood-eyes. They're here to watch and they let us take her. Seems the good doctor isn't liked any more among his own kind," Lebegue reported. Monty accepted it with a short, brief nod.

"We can take care of them too if we have to. And we should. They've no right to walk on our territory." He turned to Imogen. "You can't spill, you understand? He's crazy, but you're not. We don't have a private island to run to if things get rough. There are plenty of people who'd want to chop us up to find how we work."

That reminded me of one in particular who was willing, very willing, to chop people apart and find out. A calculus, something very clear, but it was already coming.

"I don't want to hurt you kids," Imogen said, shakily, standing up to them even now. "I tricked them. They hurt me, but I lied to them and they believed me. She wasn't herself, shocked and gripped with pain; she squeezed my shoulder with her hand. "It was you I lied about, X-guy. Told them I was the one who got through Meera's power in time. Then they tested me with the other one, who looks at you. He just looks at you. That's how he sets you on fire." So it was not Ismail of the Moirai at all who was the one who stood here.

There wasn't anything to say to that. I didn't move to stop her touching me. It didn't matter what anyone did, now.

"She is coming," the male vampire said. He sniffed the air avidly as a dog, and pointed a long finger at me. "She will want his blood. If you did not bring him here then I would have demanded it."

"Well, she can't have him," Monty defended me. "She's meant to rip apart the Cullens. She doesn't need to kill any humans. That's the deal."

He did not reply.

"The tide's changing, Monty. Look out there," Lebegue said.

Rocks, grasses, and black water barely lightened by the yellow beam as far as I could see with human sight. The tides steadily slapped the cliff face in a quick mounting sound. The light went out in a whisper and a beat between one splash and the next.

"Fuck," Monty said, keeping a steady tone. "The Coast Guard weren't supposed to be here tonight. Supposed to do it remotely." Monty transformed only a few inches from us—I heard Imogen choke in a breath. The warm dark fur materialised from thin air and a rush of heat, sharp teeth and claws glinting in the fire's light, suddenly-lambent eyes glinting and aware of seeing everything.

"It's about time." Fane Clearwater lifted her head and glared at me. "If you two were stupid enough to bring them here—especially Bodhi—and you're very stupid and can't even drive a van—then she's too late to read our minds. I'm ready to go."

She put herself outside before changing; the large wolf ran and was out of sight before the blink of an eye.

The twins wanted to ruin the light and so there were things they wished no human to see. Israel's shape was the only werewolf left by the vampire. They thought this one far less strong than Bodhi, or that there was a worse threat—there was a worse threat.

Imogen was watching Nathaniel. "Wait, you're human too?" she said quickly. "You're not a—um. Thing that you call yourselves that involves changing into giant wolves?"

"Superhero?" he said. "Yep. Can't turn." There were low noises beyond, but he didn't seem concerned yet. Or afraid of the vampire with Israel standing there, a light brown wolf with reddish streaks across his back and head. "But I'm one of Monty's imprints. That means he'll know if anything happens to me. For them it's like always being able to look up and see your people waiting for you like stars. It becomes a net full of us, shining like suns..." It sounded oddly poetic. Perhaps he directed it at the cold one waiting to spring for a warning.

The yellow light outside came again, but this time the beam shone down not far from our cliff, crooked and in a bridge over the ocean. The vampire chose that moment to strike and Imogen cried out in shock.

The wolf and the man-shaped thing rolled on the floor with each other—a savage open mouth in a face shaped like a human—the trenchcoat ripped and torn. Israel bared his teeth and the claws slashed down. The walls and floor shook. We humans sheltered in a corner, and the giant wolf outweighed the man with scarlet eyes. Israel bent his head to a leg—the wolves were made for this—and sent it flying across the room.

Then the dismembered monster spoke calmly. "I surrender. A temporary loss of control. You should not blame me for it, Child of the Moon." Imogen was staring not at them but at the firepit; she pulled a stray bootlace from a glowing coal.

That wasn't how you killed them. You had to burn the pieces. But Israel chose to spare the vampire while he reached for his own leg and placed it by his thigh. Like Antony, part by part he would return. There was a howl like a scream beyond in the dark, and Nat's shoulders swept upward like sharp needles. Shapes like a man and a woman crossed the beam for a swift moment, by a dark wolf either Monty or Fane, while a third screamed—

_There is worse. There is much worse._

I had tipped over a wide narrow-lipped stone bowl with dark red residue in the base—mixed with clumps of dirt like tea grounds.

"Nat? What did you do?" It turned my stomach.

He spoke despite it all, his voice very level.

"Blood, but it's legit," he said. They weren't vampires. "We stole it from the clinic. Dust and ash Monty scraped up, parts of her. Probably lots of plant matter mixed in. Salt. A new kind of ritual."

Sodium is among the materials needed to make a human; six tablespoons or so of salt. It's not a large part of our composition. The sea lashed against the cliffs below.

In the fragments of leapings through the golden light heavy shapes flew at Meskah and her twin of the Moirai, and perhaps she could not use her gifts when she was besieged. A creature with no compunction about murdering humans to eat would have less for someone capable of fighting them—and they were children. Fane in particular.

The rules of the world were wrong: rituals with blood and salt and stone and monsters were nothing to do with reason—yet the energy was in an equation of transformation—

It came, and Israel lifted his head to watch. That was his most important mistake. He turned his head to the beam of yellow light that illuminated the sea, and at that moment the vampire below him hit his skull.

He lay on the ground, unmoving. The vampire held his leg to his thigh and balanced upright, that translucent fluid trickling down ripped jeans.

And outside there was a waving stream of dust in the yellow light, rising as if from the sea.

"One imprint," the vampire counted. "One sacrifice. One surplus."

Nat scrambled out of the glassless window. It was the wise thing to do—to be with the others, and he knew the place. The vampire could have caught him but instead blocked me from that escape. In a moment Imogen formed a different plan. Glowing coals spread on the ground and fire gave her a shield, and she held a long burning stick in the air.

"You come closer," she threatened, "and your leg—I _know_ fire hurts you, you just stay back!" And she protected me. Her brown eyes blazed and I could believe she was strong enough to set him on fire.

"I smell her on you," he said, red eyes never moving nor blinking. They called to us, even though I should have stared at the light as yellow as some full moons radiating a bridge across the earth. Dust hissed.

"...You mean me?" Imogen suggested. "The Coast Guards will come here soon, my friends are bringing them, and if you lay so much as a finger on any of us then—"

"I think you should be more specific," I said.

"Ellie," he said, and then: "Remember what she did to me."

If he were human I would have described his features as Hispanic, darker than me. He looked hardly older than twenty and was nobody whose face I remembered. When Helen and Fane fought the other vampire I would have sworn to a flash of fair hair above the coat and a pale face twisted in rage. He had brown hair above heavy brows, a long face and soft-edged long nose. The process would have turned his skin glass-smooth and reworked his features to a dangerous allure. This one had both hands; I'd felt them. He was frightening, but it wasn't the same fear as before. Monty called him Carl, but the torn trenchcoat didn't show a hissing mass of writhing vines below.

"...You're not Carl." Imogen and I stood against the wall, behind her fire. "Not that one Helen knew."

Maybe I was right about the brilliant red in his eyes and what it meant. The translucent fluid over his leg seemed to piece the gap back together; the stone skin melted into it and slowly he returned to wholeness. It wouldn't be long now.

"Remember that you watched them burn my hand," he said. His teeth were very white in his face when he smiled, and below his coat old bloodstains lay on his clothes. "Remember that Bodhi slew me with fire and sword."

"And brought me a tentacle for a trophy," I said. That made him angry. Scarlet flared in the brilliant eyes and he startled forward, too soon, too soon—

I spoke again and turned him back for another moment. "You're not Carl at all. Someone else. Memories that aren't yours. You shouldn't remember them burning your hand—you weren't there."

But a single particle of dust on the wind was not difficult to miss. It was to fly anywhere and do anything, and the beam of crooked light was oddly clogged.

"You're someone else. Someone modern. Look at your hands, at your chest. Remember who you really are. Remember that and don't eat us—"

Dust and fog sliced into blood and brain and this time she changed someone.

_We forget almost everything that meant anything to us as a human, because the pain is the worst you can ever know._

Remember what the dust gave to your mind.

"I'm Carl," the man who wasn't any more repeated, and he bared his teeth like a feral dog. "Carl. She will form from you again."

Perdita soared on the winds and beat against the bars of a cage, and all of us she summoned here.

Bar for Imogen, who came here herself, and who brandished fire.

"You leave X alone," she threatened. Perhaps she almost succeeded to immolate his weeping thigh. But he stepped smoothly over the flames, avoided her brand, and cast it down to burn on the ground. His long stone fingers wrapped around her neck.

The instants of time passing slowed to a crawl. A silent voice. A tongue protruding from her mouth. A tightening hand of a statue. Dangling feet kicking against the air.

I said something, but it made no sense.

—


	42. Viewless, Voiceless

There was a noise from my throat. The wordless call wouldn't stop. Imogen's eyes were dry earth in her wax face. It was a lie. There had been a crack like a stick splitting away from a tree.

She was on fire. A piece of her coat smoked on the coals from the firepit. She wouldn't put it out for some reason. Her silver chain was askew. Her head bent to the side. The skin of her neck was clean.

"No. God. Oh, no. Leave her. You don't need to. Get your filthy hands off her." He was not holding her any longer. She was all fire, a white knight with a crop of red hair, burning, questioning, bright, intocable.

She said nothing. Her neck was too far asunder. The ants would eat her skin like the deer in the woods. Like the dust outside.

"You watched Adelaide scream while she burned," the cold voice said somewhere in the dark around.

He was upon me now, bending, twisting. There was a smell of smoke from somewhere. The endless sound of the waves undercut it all. He forced me to look out the black window, where wolves howled.

Where ash and dust from the sea rose in the beam of light as a thousand dead ghosts.

For what was already dead could not die, and fathoms under the sea would lie.

The ashen ghosts struggled to take form above the ocean, half-formed vast wings beating in the wind by the light. The shapes that could be seen were a bare fraction of the shapes unseen. They were a multitude beyond eyes. They were legion.

The earth was more water than earth. Everything washed into the sea sooner or later. The tides of the Pacific beat along the cliffs below.

Monty had raised an army of ash ghosts. And, lost, they listened to him not at all.

Carl held me out in the direction of the lighthouse. The empty wood framing the window was hard and cross-grained, pressing a line into my chest. The skin of my arms was twisted behind me, and a pain in my wrists was dull. There was no second crack of a snapped neck. I couldn't see the empty shape on the ground any more. Only the dark, and the dust ghosts above the waves.

Seraphim and cherubim. They are not naked toddlers with wings: there are words far more strange about them. They are burning wheels within wheels, a thousand particles on fire. Alien. The birds' wings beat against an iron cage.

And they swooped.

I saw Meskah and her twin no longer fighting but wrapped in each other's arms as if they were one, or wanted the ash to believe that they were. A silhouette of clear air hung around them—an oval in the lighthouse's beam, a tiny section of golden light free from dust. Around the two figures the particles shivered as if in pain: Meskah could not make the ash any more lost and blind, and her brother did the same as he had tortured Imogen.

The wolves could not stop the tide of ash so readily. I knew the feeling of a stripe precisely cut through flesh and blood out of thin air. I saw a storm of rage strike the werewolves. I saw Monty—the dark color of his hair in the curling fur, the shape of him unmistakable even where he was, where scarcely any of the light spilled. I saw him open his mouth and seek to wound them with teeth. Nat's voice swore and pebbles skittered down the rock face—he tried to escape. Monty must feel his friend's danger like Fane had talked about her mother's safety—

There was the dust. And there was no Monty any more. One instant the wolf trying to fight: the next the cloud of dust passed through fur and blood and bone and flesh, perhaps shades of dark raindrops in the air. Then nothing. The ash passed through utterly empty air.

I stopped seeing the ashen wings between yellow light. A hand closed around my neck and stopped a high squealing noise like a butchered mouse.

A curly-haired toddler in overalls with an impossible, tremendous scowl, by a blue bucket filled with sand. A photograph, I'd said, only a picture of things I couldn't remember that another person lived through a long time ago—but perhaps there was also the taste of sand and two pairs of plump fingers smashing a sandcastle and slick moist silver-scaled salty bait—

A boy and his friends by their motorbikes, talking and laughing and swaggering and enjoying the idea that they, four friends, were strong and envied and together—

A friend, an old friend, rushing in the dark and saving an old friend, the night resolving itself to the image of a familiar face putting aside a heavy weight from me as if it was nothing, scowling again but helping me and fighting—

A battered guitar, a careful certificate, football trophies from the days before things happened in the room below the stairs, Maggie Fenton and the school dance, and a picture with a shell-encrusted frame on the walls, two older girls and a man and a woman and Monty himself, together by the sea and smiling at the camera like a complete family—

The woods. A dead man and chasing the trail of the one responsible. A black-and-white demon gloating over ripping him apart.

A wolf-cloaked soldier by fire's light speaking of vengeance he didn't understand.

Fragments, while there was nothing in the air but mist and perhaps a few drops of blood and flesh.

A hand choked the skin of my neck. Carl spoke again, slowly probing where the blood beat and reddened.

"There is nothing I want more to do than eat you now. It's difficult to wait for her."

Nat's voice still called outside. Fane's large form protected a tall human shape—Leb or Chase perhaps. He'd changed back—why? They were higher on the rocks and the ash rose to meet them.

And another wolf roused himself and swept past us, a wave of heat and fur while the cold hands stayed on wrists and neck. Israel Call heard the howls of his friends and went to try and save them from the closest threat. It was brave and he was brave as Monty, and I saw the ash rise to meet him too. I didn't see him after that.

"Do you remember?" the cool voice said. "Do you remember what they did to my hand?"

Suddenly the pair of hands covered both sides of my right hand, and the pain drove everything else out of my mind.

No welcoming sleep came for it. White-hot needles pierced the bones. He ground me to dust and placed his face close to mine when I cried. It took him a bare moment to press down. It was flattened to jelly, it was flattened to nothing, it was flattened to a sack of blood and dust— When he released it the pulpy mincemeat lump on the end of my arm was not mine and had never been mine, the purple mess flushed with red and no clear fingers or thumb anywhere to be found. He sniffed the blood and pain and poked at the mincemeat, and I was screaming again.

He shoved me back. I fell to my knees, not far from Imogen. She did not move while I grasped at the strap of her damp, smoldering coat with my left hand. He pushed me away to spare his bloodlust. Smoke filled my nose and throat now in here, and the light of the firepit flickered where it should not. I had a mad need to act and to numb all of it. I pulled the string about my forearm with my teeth, and it cut away the blood from hurting me. It would in time. I did not look at the mass on the end of my arm. He was pleased by pain even if there was no blood yet, and he spoke again—

"Four."

They said it about magpies. One for sorrow, two for mirth; three for a wedding and four for the other. There weren't four.

He didn't stop.

Four birds for a funeral.

Nathaniel screamed something that contained Lebegue's name. It was swallowed in the rushing of the wind and fog.

The vampire's stone hand tightened around my wrist and numbed the blood more than the strap.

"The humans still live," he said meditatively. I thought that I saw dust close by the old lookout, now, rising high enough. I fell over the dark sill again. The giant wolf bled around the standing human by her side, close-protected as the twins—Nat shouting to the winds. "I remember Jon's sister setting her aflame. Her dust was pain."

He shouldn't know that at all. The madness and pain flared in his eyes.

"Perdita," I whimpered to him, for her dust would be inside him. "Please."

"She is ash more than dust," said the monster who used to be someone else. I felt nothing in my arms below where he gripped again. "The others are ash. The wolves know that ash needs no more blood below the sea. How you smell—a flame is doused with fine wine. Fresh blood to the starving." He lowered a finger and prodded. I screamed again. "I remember. I remember that there are humans who smell far sweeter than others. Fair Ellie, once. Ash returns to hunt those such as us. Ash comes to slice through stone. I need to invite her in."

Again he pushed me away. I fell backward, away from Imogen. Ash rose. It was not Nat or me that it wanted.

Assume that it was a test, the thought came, cold in this night. Jon caused the vampires to return here—Helen also and she is at least equally foul, but he is the one who plans. It is because he came that the werewolves returned here to protect humans. It is because he came that his old enemies came after him. And if it is all Jon's plan there is part of this outcome he wanted from the beginning. Again for one quick moment I saw above it, more threads spiralling together behind my eyes than in the other witnesses.

Carl paced forward with a fox's grace, raising his smooth right hand with paled, crystalline fingernails. One of my legs was trapped under the other. There was no chance.

Experimentally Carl once swung through the air, and then on the second—no time between them to so much as blink—I saw white lightning flash in my eyes.

Three strokes. My skull. Blood on my face. White fire across both eyes, then sight only across one. Carl smelt the blood, and that meant it would not be long now. He'd finish. First a hand probed the gap in my forehead and soon there would be nothing left.

"Perdita," he echoed, the first her name was in his mouth. And where white lightning did not flash in my vision I saw the ash catch up to him and grind him apart in a quick moment.

He was there, ready to drink: then the ash cut through his body. Perhaps it surprised him. His mouth widened in something that seemed a scream of pain before he fell to the dust that Monty wanted of the Cullens. And the ash lingered in the blood.

Bees, a hive of buzzing bees. Perdita fell inside the places Carl had opened. The ash dust crept into my exposed mind behind my eyesocket. The world went from me.

I flew with them.

_Perdita_, I remembered,_ beating against the bars of a cage._ I felt no more pain. It was a blind dream. She was legion now. Since the first of their kind even burning did not make them die. Do not walk easily over ash graves.

The dust spiralled in a breaking storm, ignoring the humans below. In the crowd the voices blurred into a gestalt. I felt a number uncountable as stars in the evening sky and did not trouble to count the myriad.

(_killed and burned and ground to dust, and so many of us by the green fire that could not wash away_)

(_kill the ones who did this_)

(_merge to the eyes of stone bodies_)

Cells of ash. My mind flew far from my body. The ash hummed together, a trail leading from blood on my face to the air above. Consciousness is only an electric vibration between many cells.

Salt and crushing water and endless fathoms below the ocean. I tasted salt, then, and felt a strange heavy pressure as if dark waves passed far above. I'd imagined Bodhi and her brother in their early days, bleached to pale bone under the sea with white eyes, pictograms drawn in coral and salt-filled hair floating like seaweed, hundreds of years passing time deep below the currents. Aeons of the dark passed for these ash ghosts.

Blood and burning serum and green-red fires quenched by depth, half a mind and an instinct unsleeping for a very long time. I did not try to reach for the mass of them.

I wondered if Adelaide's ashes were absorbed into this—if the soft rain washed them from Helen's garden to groundwater river to sea. I felt nothing that thought itself her.

Perdita shaped and pressed herself into blood.

I didn't think either that there were memories of the second one who called himself Carl left. Human not long ago; memories lost by three days of breaking, blinding pain; nothing to him but what Perdita recreated of her friend. She whispered for everything she'd lost by Jon.

I could remember what it was like to see. Foreign constellations she dreamed and constellations I knew. I tried to let the dust become eyes as well as buzzing mass mind—

It saw in texture. Flesh like jelly and rocks like shells. The wolves were lives that meant nothing to them and the human lives unreachable. Droplets of Monty's blood moist in the air like an echo of mist. Imogen a still shape in fragile bone like smashed glass. Fane's ragged breathing like holes torn in cloth and the smaller beat of Chase's human heart by her side.

I howled for the dead, and the dead joined me.

Slice through more stone bodies with incredible ease. The dust reformed from blood, but the ash craved serum. If the storm was tamed then it could rush into yellow eyes—

The storm could rip through anything in its path: wood or stone or blood alike. Let it pass over the waters. Let it pass over the town and ruin anything in its way like a toddler clutching cicadas in his hands. Let it ruin the Cullens from the inside out and seize their stone for its own. It boiled.

_Perdita_.

_She barely knew what she did._

Anyone would become mad deprived of senses for a day. These were for an eternity. I rode their madness like a kite in the air. I was myself and they could not change that. Then they swarmed on me. They picked through memories of life like a gaunt starved man would fall on scraps of flesh on an old chicken leg, like a tide of bees descending and all stinging at once—

_...the color of slate sky on a half-warm day at evening—_

_...fresh-smelling green of mown grass by a wood gate—_

_...a pinprick of blood welling in response to a splinter—_

_...a mouth burning from hot ramen with red sauce on a frozen day—_

_...church bells ringing a clear melody above a soup kitchen—_

_...a warm human arm touching and the familiar feel of long honey-colored hair—_

A living human mind was complicated as stars whirling through a galaxy and bright with change and flashing signals, soft and irregular and blood-pulsing and foreign to stone and dust—

They starved. They roiled across Akalat's cliffs and ate through frost-angled metal and warm-hearted rock.

_Perdita_, I asked, _do you remember your stars?_

For the air was blind to them.

_The tree that grows stars on its branches_, she answered in a dream,_ is an apple tree._

And she bit into a rosy green-streaked apple with reddened fresh flesh and sticky juice ran from her chin, and she tasted it with as much keenness as blood, plump smooth dark brown seeds in the familiar points, rolled in a warm mouth before being spat out on the ground.

—A woman with lanolin-soaked hands and a knotted fillet-knife scar on her forearm tensing as she rolled a fresh grey-white warm fleece—

_But you are the one who remembers the taste of apples_, Perdita whispered. _There was so little of my life before._

The gestalt was much darker. The one common sense between them was pain. The turning white-hot flame inescapable for three days, shattering bones and wildly shaking the bursting heart and freezing you in stone through it so that even screaming was impossible. That changed you to a monster. After a brief moment of bloodthirst there was fire, and following that ash and eternal darkness.

_Kill the Cullens._

The blind ash reared and roiled toward the sky.

_Shape yourself eyes to see—_

The pattern of Orion, then the seven stars and Polaris to the north.

_How many of you were put to ash by a black-haired monster like you with a sword?_

No answer to that but dark waves of inchoate rage at all who burned them.

_Jon and Helen and all the others are monsters the same and worse._

The ash shaped itself in the same way as Perdita built a face out of blood, because I had blood and I remembered what there was to see. I gave them senses from a dream and color they had never seen before, bleeding out of a gaping wound.

The ash sight opened into the night sky. Lights were the touch of needles, soft and faint for stars and a bolt fired from a cannon for the lighthouse. For the first time in millennia there was sight opened to the ash in graves, and even the pain of the cannon blast was welcome. Fire crackled like the feel of crumpled paper below.

She was a dream and she was lost and I'd shaped her myself in blood and in my head. Perhaps I'd wanted her to find her way back because I wanted to know that lost souls could return from dreams, and the pain of her slicing into me was impossible to resummon as pain now—

_I'm not sorry_, Perdita whispered. _Kill them._

Maps of stars waited in my memory. The soft-edged needles marked a thin path in the dark.

_I want to see them all burn. I want to see them all burn. I'd pray to God to see them all burn._

Perdita echoed it, and the ash were waves of rage and vengeance. There was a faint beating in me—a distant heartbeat below the storm in the sky.

_Except in the end—_ I told Perdita, and felt the giant wolf bleeding out below. The feel of a fragile human heartbeat below thick smoke brought me back to something else.

_I'm dying_, I thought. And:

_As a human_, she echoed.

Blackness above in the sky. Blackness broken by stars.

"Die there," I told her, though I'd no voice. The ash surged in rage. "In the sun. In another sun. The stars are suns. Because there, even if you are still ash, at least you'll be light."

(_revenge_)

(_the depths breed only madness_)

(_so dark and cold for so very long_)

I thought of misshapen ash wings.

"Fly," I suggested, and thought of sun. Yellow merciless blistering in fields of strawberries. Red middays where it looked bigger than in morning, swollen and filling the sky. Orange evenings fading into blue and lost gold. A touch of heat on arms and face and the hope that day would be warmer than night. Every color and no color when you tried to look at it directly, flashing to strange colors behind the eyes after you looked away, and on its own it was light so hot that it would be white if you could see properly. Enough fire in its heart to burn for billions of years more.

Sun was a god when all you knew was warmth and life from it, in the passing old days that Bodhi and her brother remembered—that at least some of the ash must have looked to in their days. We belonged to the golden ball in the sky at morning, for we'd die without it. Life and light and this world's fulcrum, our true center. Distances and sizes that a human couldn't hold in their head at once, only metaphors—the hours from east coast to west, the circumference of the whole earth measured by the distance a sun's shadow fell at meridian arcs between places—

To think sun and become it. Change all the connections and all the sparks in a mind to that one object.

"Journey to the sun. Once you're in space then it will pull you to itself no matter what. Perhaps you'll burn for good and become light to earth. Or even if it doesn't, there are other stars. Fly through space until you find one hotter still. It's a stronger goal than staying in the dark, and you know that it will end. Be bright as suns."

And then there was a memory of the last time I'd lived to see the sun rise, rainbowed prisms separating light into all colors and a dawn that broke blue mist and fog—

A blue-grey Cooper's hawk rising, spreading its wings on the wind in the daylight—

Because they had existed with nothing else they listened, eventually. And the ash like a gathering of sparking cells began to spiral into the skies.

_Then stars are our destination_, Perdita whispered, as if ashen hair brushed my face. _We see the way now._

Navigating space from star to star would not be such a terrible fate. The ash rose high, high into thinning black air, leaving land and sea and shapes far behind, and I felt the world disappear.

Parts of Perdita's dust rose up and out of the body on the ground, rising away particle by particle until it would be all gone.

_They will think you dead_, Perdita spoke, and made me see the shapes that added to a pool of blood covering an eye and skull splintered open, a hand pulped and broken on the ground, smoke coating the wooden walls and reaching the throat. There was ash further above than the body, most of it far higher now in a long string—

Spiraling away and above she showed me Fane and Chase bleeding out and Nat on the ground with scraped elbows, the texture of his eyes turned skywards in shock.

Further above still there was a distant view that gave the roar of another motorboat, bringing two humans more to Akalat. Monty's father came too late.

And closer by the sea there was a last sight I glimpsed from above. Three cold shapes rose drenched and drippng from the water, and I knew them for taller Jon and short Bodhi and tiny Alora. Colors pieced themselves together for me as if in sleep. Pale and waterlogged they rose from the sea like drowned dead men, green seaweed caught in Bodhi's black shireen-glinting hair. The Moirai twins were by the rocks near the tide and watched their approach with feral poses, but Bodhi quelled them with a single glance.

The three walked first to the wolf and the human lying together. With a sharp knife Jon Cullen peeled away some of their slow-healing flesh that already lay in ribbons, and carefully placed it in a cold metal box.

For he had always had a reason to come here.

Step by swift step Bodhi ascended to the burning lookout, her brother following leisurely but surely behind, while the world grew grey to me. She spared Imogen a glance, kicked at the fire, and then knelt to lightly place a hand across my chest. Then to her brother she shook her head and with him walked away.

_I'm flying_, Perdita whispered in farewell, and the spiral of ash lifted high and away toward the light for good. I felt them rise beyond the curtain of the sky and into the world beyond.

Light called me, and I thought it a last glimpse of the sun, far vaster and more brilliant than it could be from the ground. It filled everything in me.

Then I had only darkness.

—


	43. Epilogue

Alora gave a glance back at the bare footprints she'd left in the snow, stretching several miles from the remote human settlement. Soon they would be covered over by the brewing blizzard that covered the sky in a blanket of white and grey clouds like plump cotton-wool balls. She could see the coming weather easy as a reflection in a mirror. The cold of the arctic circle gave her no discomfort at all, bareheaded and ungloved as she was barefooted.

It was a pity they'd had to leave the last town so quickly, and after she was just starting to like it and make new friends too. She'd always wished Jon would let her have a live puppy all her very own. And it was fun to have someone new to play backgammon with for a little while. It wasn't the first time they'd had to flee overnight. Otherwise nice Aletheia and pretty Anactoria and all the others on their lovely island far away would start to get upset, and that wouldn't be nice.

Helen was keeping a lot of notes about how lichens grew under the snow and how it was getting a little bit too warm here, and growing snowdrops in her new garden. Her family always found things to do, Alora thought. Bodhi and Killigan were hunting, and perhaps they would find some Teeth of the North to wrestle with. Big brother Jon was very busy at the moment, but he liked being very busy.

The snowflakes fell steadily in delicate crystal patterns that Alora could see resting on her skin until she brushed them off, and she thought about trying to stitch one of the six-sided shapes into a nice scarf or sweater for one of her family to wear and pretend to be human.

Alora looked ahead to where the snow faded in a white blanket on the horizon, dotted with black caves like cherry pits. When the days were just a little bit longer then the snow would turn pretty colors in pink and gold with the sun, and she'd be there walking by herself again.

She still saw her sights when she tried to dream far, and the only change she could see was that the blackness was slightly closer now. She'd fix up a pretty costume on a dressmaking dummy, and then the fabric would tear into black holes. Then came the blackness over even her eyes. After the long night nothing would be left that she could see. She'd try to pick a thread to unfray and fix it somehow, but her sight didn't show her any that she could find.

Then all she could do was to wait for the future to come. She'd find something to play with until then, sure as sunlight.

Alora walked on through the frozen wind. Her footsteps were soon swallowed by smooth snow that covered them as if they had never been.

—


End file.
